Toxic Waste, "admissions for cancers rose by 40%" in the southern Lazio

The allegation of the enviromental organisation Legambiente. The Valle del Sacco is in full environmental emergency: incinerators and pollution sites are out of control and serious diseases are on the rise. As one  doctor, Natalia, puts it: "281% more than the national average of tumors to the brain and 174% of malignant tumors of the lymphatic system for boys from birth to 14 years"

If the Caserta is the Land of fire, we are the Land of poisons. "Cemetery of Sgurgola, southern Lazio, here we talk about Olga Kožárová, a Polish citizen living in Italy for twenty years. This is the highest point in the country, behind us lie the dead, in front of us the Sacco valley with its factories, incinerators, the river stinks with the off-limits areas where even the grass is dead, like plants and the animals that eat it, as the river water and the wells. "These factories once wore work and a bit of wealth in our families, today they give us only diseases and unemployment." A modern Middle Ages, with its miseries and its plague.

The eyes of Olga, who for this land that is not hers has been fighting for years together with mothers, environmentalists, and ordinary people who want to know and understand are red with indignation. It has been a hundred years that poisons have been produced in this part of Lazio. There is everything. In Colleferro weapon factories since 1912, where it has been producing gas for colonial wars, and now missile systems, which ended up in the sight of the UN and pacifists on suspicion that they were used by Saddam Hussein as carriers for chemical weapons. In the other sites of industrial illusion, drug factories, cement factories for the manufacture of insecticides. "All industries have been discharging their waters into the river Sacco,"  says Anna Natalia, a member of the environmental coordination of Anagni.

There are more than 80 industrial outlets in the river, we read in the files of the environmentalists: "just come at night on the shores to feel the smells." In the villages of Ferentino , Anagni , Colleferro Morolo  a few years ago  6,000 heads of cattle had to be killed. They ate polluted grass and drank polluted water, their milk was poison, their flesh rotting. "The food chain is largely impaired,” says Dr. Massimo Natalia of Anagni, “we have been analyzing for years the increase of cancer, I do not know anymore how many young patients I had to cure for prostate cancer." The official figures are alarming. According to a 2012 study on childhood cancer in the Valle del Sacco spread by the environmental organisation of Legambiente, in Colleferro, Swgni and Gavignano hasrecorded a 40% increase in admissions for tumors in the  group from birth to 14 years; in Paliano, Anagni, Ferentino, Sgurgola, Murolo and Supino, the percentage of "hospitalization" of children of the same age group is 18% higher than the regional average. Appalling data in Anagni: 281% higher than the average of tumors to the brain, and 174% of malignant tumours of the lymphatic system for males aged from birth to 14 years. “And they have also closed the hospital. Diseases increase and the most important health center of the areas is shut down in order to save," says Dr. Natalia.

We are just at the entrance of the once hospital of Anagni, seen from here (the home of Franco Fiorito, the former leader of the PDL in the region, who has become a living icon of the squander of public money by the parties), the story of the savings is really surreal. The hospital has brand new operating rooms that have been sealed, tap water has the color of rust, but here once  were state-of-the-art units. Meanwhile, €4 million  have been thrown to the wind to design the airport of Frosinone, estimated cost of €90 million, a toy that has served only to local election campaigns of local ras, ended up under investigations and scandals. And the disease goes on. A recent study from the Department of Epidemiology, of the Region Health Service of Lazio, says that the presence of significant levels of hexachlorocyclohexane (a byproduct of the production of insecticides used until 2001) in the waters has been recorded – a powerful poison that causes damage to kidney function, changes in the cognitive system and to sex hormones in women. "And to think that even in the face of  this data, the Environment Ministry has decided to downgrade the entire valley of the Sacco from site of the national interest to site of regional concern. This means less money for land reclaim and a loss of national attention,” claims Parlati Lorenzo, president of Legambiente Lazio.

Not only industries but also landfills and incinerators have played their part. "The official landfills,”  points out Alberto Valleriani, “from the network for the protection of the Valle del Sacco – and especially the clandestine ones. Here in the past number of years were buried toxic and hazardous wastes under the sheds of the factories: the cows died in 2005 were poisoned by cyanide, and there has never been a culprit; at the time the companies involved were acquitted of all responsibility. Processes, one for the pollution of the Valley, and the other for the incinerator in Colleferro, are slow, and are constantly postponed, run the risk of prescription. "Before leaving the valley we look out from the bridge of Sgurgola above the river Sacco, it rains and the water is black.  “Come at night or on days of festivity,” says a farmer, “the water disappears and in its place there is only yellow foam. It is our plague.”