It is a beautiful region in northern Italy, which hides large-scale contamination. For four years, life in Veneto has been turned upside down, in particular in a “red zone” delimited by the authorities. On this territory of about twenty municipalities, the water is polluted with PFOA. It is one of the largest water tables in Europe which is contaminated.
What is PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid? It is a substance from the perfluorinated family, nicknamed the “eternal chemicals” because of their very long persistence in the environment. PFOA is one of the components of Teflon.
The pollution measured in this area comes from the Italian company Miteni. Since the 1960s and until its bankruptcy in 2018, this chemical plant would have released PFOA into nature, thus contaminating rivers, rivers, and even the taps of the inhabitants.
PFOA levels up to 40 times higher than the maximum value measured elsewhere in Italy
What can be the consequences of this pollution on their health? In 2017, a blood sampling campaign was carried out among children in this area. At Stella, for example, the results of the analyzes showed a strong presence of PFOA: its level in the blood of the little girl is 27.6 nanograms per millilitre, whereas the maximum value measured by a study carried out on a sample of the Italian population is 8.
Laura Facciolo, Stella’s mother, is worried: “This is three times more than this maximum value. And there are children here, for whom it is 30 times, sometimes even 40 times more than the maximum value“, she observes. Exposure to PFOA has been associated with certain cancers: testicular, kidney, and also with diseases of the intestines or the thyroid.
Excerpt from “Perfluorides: towards a global scandal?”, an investigation to see in “Special Envoy” on May 12, 2022.
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