Mitsubishi will have to pay for PFAS pollution caused in Veneto

The Veneto Regional Administrative Court ruled yesterday on the serious PFAS contamination in the provinces of Vicenza, Padua and Verona.He did so by sanctioning that even the Japanese giant Mitsubishi Corporation - which at the end of the 1980s established Miteni, of which it has held between 49 and 90% of the share capital over the years - will have to bear the costs for the cleanup of the poisons spread near the former Miteni of Trissino (Vicenza).Based on what emerged from surveys and investigations, in fact, in first instance administrative proceedings the judges have framed as responsible for pollution all the companies that have successively controlled the Vicenza plant.In 2009 Miteni was sold to ICI and then, five years after the outbreak of the PFAS scandal in 2013, it was declared bankrupt.

Although Mitsubishi opposed it with a series of arguments, including the attribution to Miteni of "autonomous choices and entrepreneurial strategies", the absence of "legal limits on the concentration of PFOAs, Pase and BTF" and the failure to take into account the " causal contribution of other subjects present in the industrial district", the TAR judges highlighted the "existence of a substantial unit of the enterprise” between Mitsubishi and Miteni, through a “sharing of the same natural persons in corporate roles”.In addition, the judges censured the sale of the company to ICI "for the symbolic sum of 1 euro, taking care to exclude the seller's guarantee regarding any environmental criticalities", speaking of "a grossly omissive behavior towards the competent bodies, effectively preventing the start of the safety and/or reclamation procedure which the applicable legislation brings back under the control of the public authorities, a procedure which with a reasonable degree of certainty would have allowed the elimination, or at least the effective limitation, of the the harmful effects of ongoing pollution, accidents on the environment and on the health of thousands of people".Regarding PFAS, the judges underline that these are "compounds that have long been under the attention of the international scientific community and environmental protection authorities", as they are "suspected of harmful effects on human health”, including “high levels of cholesterol and uric acid in the blood, as well as a possible correlation with certain types of liver, kidney, testicular and thyroid cancer”.

In the meantime, yes waits that the criminal trial heard on the matter arrives at a sentence PFAS scandal in Veneto, which sees executives of Miteni and companies linked to it accused for various reasons of water poisoning, environmental pollution, aggravated unnamed disaster and fraudulent bankruptcy.The procedural matter originated from the discovery, in 2013, of the serious pollution by perfluoroalkyl substances of a vast aquifer which would have affected 350 thousand citizens in the areas of Vicenza, Verona and Padua.At the urging of environmental associations, between 2015 and 2016 a random survey began in the municipalities concerned which highlighted elevated Pfas values ​​in the blood of residents:thus, in March 2018, the government declared a state of emergency with a ban on the consumption of drinking water and the establishment of a red zone in 30 municipalities.A new study conducted by scientists from the University of Padua, subjected to peer review and published in the scientific journal Environmental Health, ha calculated that precisely within this red area, between 1985 and 2018, a increase in mortality for cardiovascular diseases and malignant neoplastic diseases.

The PFAS is a group of over 10,000 synthetic molecules not present in nature, used in various industrial processes for the manufacture of products such as non-stick pans or some food packaging.Being highly stable molecules, they are not briefly degraded in the environment and have been defined as "eternal pollutants”.Exposure to Pfas has been associated with thyroid problems, diabetes, liver and immune system damage, kidney and testicular cancer and negative impacts on fertility and as of November 2023 the substances have also been recognized as carcinogenic.

[by Stefano Baudino]