Sulcis, 50% higher lung mortality

Girasole: Mosquitoes test positive for the Usutu virus: Mayor's order comes into effect.

Chimneys in the wind

From the passenger port flows the comings and goings of trucks loaded with coal that feed the last coal plant, dedicated with impunity to the woman from “Canne al vento”, Grazia Deledda. In this electric fence the very Italian flag flies, that of Enel, the public hand which has become private in the management of electricity in Sardinia. You can glimpse the chimney strong and clear from the coast of Buggerru, from the village torn by the wind and the history of Pranu Sartu to the disturbing Punta Cortis that for centuries has loomed like a boulder over the mining village of Masua.

The peak of smoke

Two hundred and fifty (250) meters of reinforced concrete perched on the sky, the tallest building in Sardinia, one of the highest in Italy, together with the Porto Tolle chimney, in the Venetian Padania. Giorgio Ruffolo, Minister of the Environment in the governments of Giovanni Goria, Ciriaco De Mita and Giulio Andreotti, since his advent, had decided that the area should be declared a "high environmental risk". Since that resolution of the Council of Ministers, it was November 30, 1990, 32 years have passed. A flood of money spent left to right to affirm a sacrosanct right: to work, without dying at work. Little and nothing has been known about that clean-up plan. Lost in accounts hidden in the secret maze of the public and private sectors.

State awards

Everyone has taken big prizes, from private to public factories. The goal was to comply, stem and block those silent and camouflaged emissions of poisons into the atmosphere, that is the air that reaches straight into the lungs of those who work and live in those territories. For a long time it was thought that one had to keep quiet, in order not to lose work and loaf. But then, for many, both the work and the loaf fell short. The factories, from one excuse to another, have given way to the mirage of the welfare state, redundancy in all ways, biblical times spent in the limbo of doing nothing and hoping nothing. Until the advent of green.

The electric escape

Enel announces that it closes everything, goes away. The power plant, that of the largest chimney, closes. If Putin hadn't thought about giving coal back its breath, as early as 2025 the electricity factory would have stopped running the last furnaces still on. In reality, however, in this promised land, devoted to unemployment and pollution, people are dying, unfortunately and dramatically, more and more. The spotlight was rekindled by Draghi and Cingolani, the premier and minister of the wind transition on land and sea of Sardinia. With the energy decree, challenged as "colonial" by the Sardinian Region, they decided to place a regasification vessel in the most desolately empty port of the island. In theory to give some gas to Enel which, however, has put pen to paper its refusal: we don't need it.

The health war

The Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the highest technical body on the health of Italians, and in theory also of Sardinians, writes to the Ministry of Transition: that gas carrier in Portovesme pollutes, is incompatible with the already devastating environmental and health conditions of the population, both that of workers and residents in that area. That denial to the powerful Snam is a declaration of war. The crossfire is consumed in volumes of response documents that Snam sends directly to the environmental department the day after mid-August. Heavy cards, written in code, alphanumeric and encrypted, for professionals. Hundreds of pages with creepy data, analysis and confessions. Snam, as we reported a few weeks ago, had asked the Sardinian Region for its environmental findings, cancer and mortality registers in that area. He even asked for a face-to-face with local health facilities. The state pipeline company, however, is in a hurry. The silence on those data forced the gas multinational to appoint an analysis and design company to unhinge the database of ministries of health and the environment to cross-reference projections and findings. It is to be established whether that pollution in that territory has altered, how when and how much, the health conditions of the inhabitants of an area with as many as 53,000 people. The response is devastating. The figures and analyzes are unprecedented shocks. All numbers put in black and white, made explicit even for those who have not fully understood what is happening in that land that has always been hidden from the distracted eyes of those who should safeguard work and health.

The shock analysis

The crucial sentence is detailed. Explicit as if those gun barrels projected into the sky had decided to shoot straight into the lungs of this territory. Snam writes the report on the analysis of Istat reports for mortality 2015-2019, the latest available: "Examined as a whole, the mortality of the approximately 53,000 inhabitants of the six municipalities that are part of the area at risk is characterized by an increase in deaths due to Diseases of the Respiratory System in both the male and female populations, corresponding to an increase of just under 50% compared to expectations on a regional basis. This excess appears in relation to an increase in cases of acute respiratory diseases in both genders, and in cases of asthma limited to the female population, both concentrated in the municipalities of Carloforte and Carbonia ».

Breathless

The statement takes away the fact. It is being stated that compared to ordinary mortality data, in the 53,000 inhabitants residing in the six municipalities of the industrial area, 50% more die from respiratory diseases than was expected on the basis of normal forecasts. That very significant increase in deaths from respiratory diseases is a territorial average, this means that in two municipalities, especially Carbonia, the data are even higher.