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The first hearing of the so-called "Smog trial" took place in Turin on Tuesday 18 June first trial for eco-defendants ever carried out in Italy.Among the accused are the former mayors of the Piedmontese capital Chiara Appendino and Piero Fassino, as well as the former president of the Piedmont Region Sergio Chiamparino.According to the accusations, between 2015 and 2019, they did not put in place adequate measures to guarantee the protection of air quality of the city of Turin, which today appears to be among the Municipalities more at risk for this type of pollution.For this reason, public administrators are charged with the crime of negligent environmental pollution.According to the prosecutor's consultants, the concentrations above the legal limits of the pollutants recorded in the Turin area would have caused over a thousand premature deaths and several hospital admissions.A second line of investigation, referring to a subsequent period, also sees the current president of...

Following the checks carried out by Arpa Piemonte, which certified the failure to comply with the limits of PFAS emissions into the environment, the province of Alessandria sent a double warning to Syensqo – the former Solvay – imposing a halt to production for 30 days.The decision was taken after the company was in recent weeks at the center of particularly serious foam releases in the Bormida river and after investigations conducted for years which resulted in accusations of negligent environmental disaster and which led to discoveries that were anything but reassuring, such as the discovery of Pfas in the blood of the inhabitants of Spinetta Marengo.«It is time for a national law that prohibits the use and production of these dangerous substances to protect the environment and the health of citizens», commented Greenpeace Italia. THE Pfas they are a group that collects over 10,000 synthetic molecules not present in nature, used in various industrial processes...

With a provision published a few days before the elections, the Meloni government has allocated another 230 million euros of public funds (after 200 last year) for the benefit of new ski lifts and artificial snow systems for ski slopes.The decision not only contrasts with what has been reported for many years by committees and mountain communities which denounce how mass skiing is harmful to the territories from a social and environmental point of view, but also with what was recently put in black and white by the Bank of Italy in 2022 which, in a report, explained how artificial snow (and the practice of alpine skiing) are no longer economically sustainable due to the ever decreasing presence of snowfall due to overheating.Furthermore, artificial snow causes great water consumption and pollution of the territories due to the chemical substances used in the production of synthetic snow, and is therefore particularly impacting on an environmental level. THE'announcement of the Ministry...

After about 30 years of trying to gradually eliminate hydrochlorofluorocarbons, harmful gases that deplete the ozone layer and warm the planet, researchers have detected for the first time a significant drop in the levels of these substances in the atmosphere and a consequent reduction in the ozone layer depletion potential:This is reported by new research conducted by scientists from the University of Bristol and published in the scientific journal Nature.The authors explained that global concentrations of such gases peaked in 2021 – five years earlier than expected – and that since then there has been a decline which represents a significant "milestone" in blocking dangerous ultraviolet solar radiation.“This is a remarkable success story that shows how global policies are protecting the planet,” commented Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the University of California who was not involved in the study. It was more than 50 years ago when...

Contrary to what is predicted by the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which predict the global sequestration capacity of between 1 and 30 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year - the technologies currently in use, the availability of storage sites and the commitments made by governments to combat the phenomenon could remove a maximum of 16 gigatons of CO2 per year, even if «realistically» the limit will be 5 or 6 gigatons.This was established by a new study conducted by Imperial College, subjected to peer review and published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, who through new analyzes shows that various estimates on the topic "have been highly speculative".Samuel Krevor, co-author and researcher in Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: «Our study is the first to apply growth models from established sectors to CO2 storage.Our new model offers a more realistic and practical approach to predic...