Trieste, March 28th, 2013 – Today Free Trieste joined Greenaction Transnational’s sit-in to protest the incinerating of waste from Italy in the local incineration plant. The demonstration started in front of the City Council, in Piazza dell’Unità or Piazza Grande. Indeed, the mayor is the main health authority.
With his investigations, Greenaction’s President, Roberto Giurastante, proved the existence of an incessant traffic of waste from Italy to Trieste.
The majority of the waste is from regions Veneto and Campania, and ends up incinerated in Trieste. Sometimes it travels through the international Free Port, which belongs to the Free Territory of Trieste (1947 Italian Peace Treaty, annexes VI, art. 34 and VIII, art. 2).
But there is more: the company in charge of the plant, located in Via Errera, is the ACEGAS-APS and it receives public money to dispose of the waste. This massive disposal causes not only severe pollution, but health hazards for the people, who end up breathing heavy metals (including Nickel, Beryllium, Chromium, Cadmium and Arsenic) and the exhalations of chemicals disposed in the incineration plant.
The most concerning one is particulate material 10 (PM), a mixture of natural and artificial substances: this particulate increases the risk of respiratory mortality, especially in children under one year of age, it damages lungs development, and may cause respiratory illnesses, affecting especially the bronchi.
The Trieste incineration plant has rather scarce control over the release of dioxins, which are persisting, bioaccumulating pollutants that poison both soil and food chains in a 20KM range. This means, even in bordering Slovenia.
Trieste doesn’t want the Mafia’s waste.
