Angelo Antolino

The size of the disaster

Only now we start to comprehend the size of the disaster that concerns the provinces of Naples and Caserta: A disaster that embrace the environment, the health services, the economy, and therefore is mainly a social disaster. An predicted disaster. For more than twenty years these zones have been used as one immense dustbin in order dispose of industrial the toxic refuse of Italy and some other ECC’s countries like Germany. The Camorra (mafia) conceals highly toxic material on arable soils or fields dedicated to grazing as the correct disposal would be too costly. Often these wastes are illegally burn thus releasing all over the surrounding territories their venom. Roberto Saviano dedicates the last chapter of Gomorra to the problem of the illicit disposal of toxic refuses titling it “la terra dei fuochi”? (the earth of fires). In fact it would be enough to drive through the countryside to see, at all hours, these lethal fires day or night.

Articles and photographs routinely appear on the national and often in the international press. They tell of a city, Naples, afloat in tons of waste. A city under a constant “refuse emergency”. However, this is only the tip of the problem, one immediately visible. In reality there is no emergency in Campania where for 20 years the cancer death rate has been higher than in the rest of Italy, where abnormal fetuses do not count any more. In the provinces of Naples and Caserta every family has known, at least once, what it means to die of tumor. In the areas near Acerra the amount of Diossina found in the land and sheep is so high that a grazing prohibition was issued for seven years. All this continues with the disinterested silence of most and the obstinate denunciations of the few.