The small town of Trissino is sleepy at the foot of the Italian Alps, surrounded by rich fields and green hills, a commercial area with smaller industrial plants on the outskirts. Nothing indicates that gigantic amounts of drinking water and large parts of the soil in the entire region were contaminated with extremely poisonous chemicals from here. A court in Rome recently came to the judgment.
Hundreds of civilian plants joined the process, including the environmental organization Greenpeace and numerous mothers after they discovered that their families had so -called “eternal workers” in their blood. According to estimates by non -governmental organizations, around 350,000 people could be affected in the Veneto region of Northern Italy.
Eleven managers of a chemical factory were therefore sentenced to years of prison. The convicts worked for the Japanese Mitsubishi Group, among others, as well as for Chemical Investors from Luxembourg.
What are eternal slide chemicals?
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Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl compounds, for short PFAs, are extremely constant chemicals that cannot be broken down. If you get to the environment, remain “forever”. Therefore, they are also referred to as eternal crop chemicals.
Science was able to establish a connection between PFAs with liver and kidney damage, an increased cholesterol level, diseases on the lymph nodes and lower fertility in men and women. In addition, according to the German Federal Environment Agency, it leads to underweight in newborns, can reduce the effectiveness of vaccinations and cause cancer in high concentrations.
The chemicals are considered a worldwide problem and can be proven almost everywhere. Scientists from the Harvard University found in 2018 that 98 percent of US citizens have PFAs in their blood. Studies on breast milk in countries such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines were able to demonstrate the substances in almost all samples. In Germany, too, every child has the eternal chemicals in the body; A fifth of it exceeds critical values.
From the atomic bomb onto the plate
Pfas were discovered in 1938 by the American chemical giant Dupont. Because of the special properties of protecting metal from corrosion even at high temperatures, the chemicals were used for the development of the atomic bomb.
Later, the fabric received its way into households worldwide under the brand name “Teflon” in the form of coated pans. This started the commercial rise of the chemicals, which proved to be useful for many products. With their unique resistance to heat, water and dirt, they are used in a variety of consumption and industrial products. These chemicals can be found in all possible products: from waterproof outdoor clothing, make-up and dirt-repellent carpets to medical devices, semiconductors and wind turbines.
The chemicals, which are mainly absorbed through drinking water and food, accumulate in the body over time. In addition to breast milk and blood, they can also be detected in hair.
Decades of covering the danger
In 1998 the non -stick coating “Teflon” was suddenly died in a clear scratch when a hundred cows of a cattle of a cattle breeder near a production facility in Parkersburg suddenly died in the American West Virginia.
It later emerges that thousands of people in the region were contaminated by the PFAS-containing waste water from the DuPont factory and a licking dump of the factory. Documents show that, unlike state authorities, Dupont has known of the danger for decades, but further derived the material into the environment. Studies suggest that a high PfoA content (a special Pfas substance) in the region is related to cases of kidney and testicular cancer.
In 2017, Dupont and the now split-off group approved chemours to pay 3550 affected people 671 million under dollars.
Risk for millions of people – Europe is planning to exit
Pfas are still being directed to the environment. The US environmental organization EEC, among other things, has calculated, based on measurements of the US Federal Environment Agency, that almost 10,000 places in the United States are loaded with fabrics. It is estimated that around 160 million people could be affected in the United States alone.
So far, 23,000 places piled with PFAs are known. According to the European Environment Agency, 2300 of them are so heavily contaminated that there is a health risk.
In Alsace in French, the authorities are currently warning against drinking tap water. In controls, increased values of 20 eternal drives were determined.
In Dalton, Georgia, in the United States, is currently being sued for a carpet manufacturer and again 3M against chemops and the chemical company. There, too, residents fear that PFAS contaminations are ill.
Under the former US President Joe Biden, legally binding limit values for six PFAS chemicals were decided in drinking water. The Trump administration has reversed four of them.
In 2023, the 3M group agreed to pay around $ 10 billion to local water providers to enclose complaints about PfAS pollution and those that could still occur in the future. 3m is also active in the Netherlands, where it was also sued against the group for contamination.
The European Union has recently passed legislation to reduce the use of the substances. In the long term, Member States should do without Pfas. Exceptions should apply to products, for the use of which PFAS is “essential for society”. This could include, for example, medical material, such as stents on opening and closed blood vessels or artificial joints. Editor: Tamsin Walker, Sarah Steffen
