For more than a century, the fate of Spinetta Marengo has been inextricably linked to the chemical industry. The hamlet of Alessandria located beyond the Bormida river is a world apart from the city. «A strategic hub of excellence for the great protagonists of Italian and international industrial chemistry», we read on the website of Syensqo, formerly Solvay (from 2002 to 2023), before that Ausimont, Montedison and Montecatini. Until the 1970s, approximately 1,150,000 tons of polluted soil were deposited on the land at the plant, because the law did not prohibit itreleasing hexavalent chromium and chlorinated compounds, toxic and carcinogenic substances, into the land and water. In December 2019, the Court of Cassation convicted three executives of Ausimont and Solvay for environmental disasterfor failing to carry out maintenance on the plant’s water network, the leaks of which caused the dispersion of contaminants deposited by previous properties.
Pfas are added to historical pollutants
In recent years, the nightmare of PFAS has also arrived in Spinetta, present in the water and air, as well as in the blood of citizens. It is precisely from the discovery of the perfluorinated compound cC6O4, in production since 2012, that the way has been opened for a new criminal trial. In 2020, following the complaints from Legambiente and the WWF, the Alessandria Prosecutor’s Office launched investigations which, with a 14,000-page file, led to the formulation of the hypothesis of a negligent environmental disaster against two Solvay managers, for having continued to pollute the aquifer due to leaks from the water system, perpetrating and aggravating «the already significant alteration of the environmental matrices of water, air and soil, in the internal area of the plant and downstream of the same”, also considering Pfas.
Yesterday, May 6, the preliminary hearing took place in Alessandria. «With our complaint», explains the lawyer Vittorio Spallasso, of the WWF and representing some citizens, «we asked to verify whether, with the cC604, the historical pollutants pass together into the groundwater and the disaster continues, now no longer unnamed, as in the first trial, but foreseen and punished by a specific eco-crime, i.e. the environmental disaster incriminated by the art. 452 quater of the penal code”.
Michela Sericano, president of the Legambiente Ovadese Valli Orba and Stura clubwho will appear as a civil party with the lawyer Gian Maria Mosca, comments bitterly: «There are few of us who worry about health and ask for an end to pollution. The population seems resigned and the politicians are convinced that the area cannot do without the chemical centre, which provides a direct living for six hundred families and two thousand through related activities. “Do we want to take the bread out of our mouths?”, some say.” In fact it took twenty years to arrive at the first trial, which opened in 2008 and concluded in 2019. It was in fact 1988 when some employees of the chemical centre, the then League for the Environment, the WWF and Democratic Medicine denounced in one complaint the danger of pollution of the groundwater resulting from the storage of toxic and harmful substances in the industrial area.
Special observed chemical hub
The chemical center is a company classified a Risk of Major Accident, we read on the Arpa Piemonte website, which carries out checks on environmental impacts. In the last year he has also achieved the first monitoring activities of Pfas in the airnoting, among other things, that «the measurements carried out on PM10 samples collected at the via Genova point (in Spinetta Marengo, ed) in the September 2023 campaign, highlight the constant presence of cC6O4 and Adv-n2 (another type of Pfas, ed) on all samples, as well as other Pfas molecules with values above the limits of quantification”.
The institutional website of the Piedmont Region dedicates a page to PFAS pollution in the chemical center of Spinetta Marengo“where these substances have been produced for several decades” and “currently the active productions in the chemical hub are almost entirely linked to the chemistry of fluorinated products”.
The local health authority of Alessandria has carried out a mortality study entitled: Evaluation of the health status of residents in the Spinetta Marengo area of the Municipality of Alessandria (1996 – 2016). The study «cannot identify causal links», but states: «the epidemiological analysis of the available data would seem to indicate among males who live in the Spinetta Marengo area a higher level of local mortalitystatistically significant, compared to the corresponding mortality indicators, both regional and provincial, for the following specific pathologies: melanoma and arterial hypertension. While, among the females statistically significant excess mortality would be reported to pathologies of the urinary system (kidney tumors, bladder tumors) e to tumors of the respiratory system (lung tumors)”.
New generation Pfas
Last April 13th, the presence of foam in the waters of the Bormida river, at the chemical hub discharge, triggered ARPA checks. In addition to the surfactants, responsible for the foams, Pfas were also detected: Pfoa, which have no longer been produced since at least 2012, were present in all the samples, like Adv. cC6O4 was found only in points inside the plant. Compared to the samplings of January 23, 2024, it was found that for Pfoa the situation is stationary, while for the so-called new generation perfluoroalkyl substances the values have “almost doubled”.
On the Piedmont Region website, it is specified that the new Pfas «appear to be less bioaccumulative but equally persistent in ecosystems». And then: «Currently the scientific community is still evaluating the environmental and health impacts of many new generation Pfas: at the moment little information is available regarding toxicity, diffusion and environmental impact. Furthermore, for many of these substances the methods necessary to carry out specific and accurate analyzes are still being defined. The current legislation only refers to some older generation substances.”
However, the limits on the presence of Pfas in drinking water, introduced with Legislative Decree 18 of 2023, which will come into force in 2026, also include new generation compounds, due to the precautionary principle. «These substances do not exist in nature: how can we believe that having them in our body has no consequences for health?», asks Michela Sericano of Legambiente. “Is it right that the citizens of Spinetta and Alessandria are still exposed to PFAS, after having suffered a century of pollution in the chemical hub?”.
Episode no. 3 – continues
Read also:
The endocrinologist: «This is how Pfas poison our body».
Pfas, mothers speak at the Vicenza trial
The photos are from the Legambiente Ovadese Valli Orba and Stura club
