Some light reading for you all

Here is a freaking horrific article about the current trash situation in Naples.   Key words include “toxic waste”, “organized crime”, “cancer”, and “violent protest”.    One illuminating paragraph -

“Camorra-run companies routinely win contracts to dispose of toxic waste from northern Italian industries by underbidding competitors, then dispose of it illegally and untreated in Campania’s rivers and dumps. Camorra-run companies also mix toxic waste with other materials and resell it as fertilizer, he said. “

 I say “illuminating” because I have been beating my head against the wall trying to understand why residents here are so opposed to a new dump.  Last Tuesday Joe was going to come home early so I could go to a 4pm movie.  He left work (downtown) at about 3pm.  He got home after 6pm.  While he was at work, the locals had moved great piles and dumpsters full of trash into the middle of the roads that lead to the highway and set them on fire.  Burning trash.  In the middle of the road.  Blocking all access to the highway.

One would think, “Hey – if we’ve got enough trash laying around to stage this form of protest…. maybe we should just LET THEM OPEN THE DUMP.”  But now that I read this about the toxic waste…. probably I wouldn’t want a dump site near my town, either.

Another good article here.  Key words “riot police”, “three weeks of uncollected rubbish”, “triangle of death”, “high mortality and cancer rates”, “congenital malformation”, and “poisoned wasteland” (Ok, so these are key *phrases*, not key *words*.  Whatever.)

It is the triangle of death,” says Marco the protester, describing the route from Naples to the industrial north and back through Bari in south-east Italy. “Triangle of death” was also the title of a Lancet Oncology report in 2004 linking toxic waste dumps to high mortality and cancer rates. A more de­tailed study backed by the government’s civil defence department in 2006 also found “significantly inc­reased rates” of congenital malformation and cancer in parts of Naples and Caserta.

Waste comes from metal and chemical industries in the north, tanning factories, refuse from treatment facilities and dairy farms, much of it mixed to be spread as “fertiliser” on fields. According to Roberto Saviano, a Neapolitan who infiltrated the Camorra and wrote the best-selling Gomorrah, even the dead from overcrowded cemeteries in the north are exhumed and reburied there.

Understandably, Campania’s residents fear that if incinerators are used, as the government has proposed for years, illegal toxic waste will simply be blasted into the atmosphere.

 

I’m going to try and keep telling myself that living here is a wonderful opportunity to travel, and living on base is totally safe and wonderful and everything is great.  I’m going to drink my bottled water and not go outside on smoky days and try very hard not to think of the phrase “congenital malformation and cancer”.  Geez.

Write your congressmen, people.  Why on earth does the American Military have an installation here?  Like Vesuvius isn’t enough to worry about?  GAH!