<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/10/factory-red-dust-death-italy-south-taranto>
"Every day, Teresa Battista wipes away the thick layers of dust that coat the
graves in San Brunone cemetery in Tamburi, a neighbourhood in the south Italian
coastal city of Taranto.
Yet despite her best efforts, the cleaner, who has worked at the cemetery for
35 years, has been unable to prevent the marble tombs from developing red
scarring – the result of toxic iron-ore dust.
Even after death, she said, the adjacent steel factory, which since 1965 has
been spewing noxious fumes alleged to have caused thousands of cancer deaths,
is inescapable.
Most of the people buried in the cemetery died of the disease. Two were
Battista’s brothers. “Almost all of them here were young people,” she said.
“This factory kills everything.”
The long-beleaguered steelworks, one of Europe’s largest and still a major
employer in Italy’s under-developed south, is once again in the spotlight as
Giorgia Meloni’s government scrambles to keep it afloat.
Meloni recently appointed a special commissioner to temporarily take over the
plant, which is now called Acciaierie d’Italia (ADI) but is better known by its
former name, Ilva, after the collapse of talks with the global steelmaker
ArcelorMittal, its majority owner since 2018.
As the government searches for new investors, residents of Taranto, and
especially those in Tamburi, which is separated from the factory just by a wire
fence, recount a story that pits livelihoods against lives, the economy against
the environment, and rich against poor.
The factory was built in Taranto, an ancient city founded by the Greeks, in the
early 1960s, after being rejected by Bari, capital of the Puglia region, and
nearby Lecce. Acres of farmland and thousands of olive trees were destroyed to
make way for the sprawling complex, which is almost three times the size of
Taranto itself."
Capitalism 101: externalise costs.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
