AI-Summary – News For Tomorrow
A chemical plant, Miteni, previously shut down in Italy after contaminating water with PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” has relocated its equipment to Lote, India, resuming production. Miteni’s contamination in Italy led to health issues for workers like Ilario Ermetti, who had extremely high PFAS levels, and prompted activism from groups like Mamme No Pfas, concerned about children’s exposure. PFAS are linked to serious health problems. Despite international awareness, India lacks regulations and widespread research on PFAS. The Lote industrial area already has a poor environmental record, with a dysfunctional wastewater treatment plant exacerbating pollution concerns for local communities.
News summary provided by Gemini AI.
The thick green jungle and rust-red hills of Lote, on India’s west coast, give way to a small hill where a factory looms against the sky.
And yet, all of the company’s equipment, its patents and processes – everything needed to produce Pfas – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, wedged between villages and groves of trees. And the factory has just started to produce forever chemicals again.
The silos of now-shuttered Miteni factory, a chemical plant accused of knowingly contaminating the water of hundreds of thousands of people in Trissino, near Vicenza, northern Italy on February 6, 2025. Photograph: Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images
The worst-affected were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, showed one of the highest concentrations of Pfas ever recorded in human blood. “When the story came to light, I looked at a list of medical conditions related to Pfas, and found out I had them all,” says Ermetti.
High levels of Pfas in the blood are associated with increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent surgical operation.
Former Miteni worker Ilario Ermetti showed a high concentration of Pfas in his blood. Photograph: Filippo Tommasoli
Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and activist with Mamme No Pfas (Mothers Against Pfas), started organising after discovering her children’s blood showed high levels of forever chemicals. When she learned that Miteni’s patents and equipment were being sent to India, she was shocked.
“As mothers, as women, our concern has grown,” she said. “Because our children are everyone’s children.”
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Investigations have shown that levels of forever chemicals in the environment are alarmingly high, especially near production sites. But although international attention is growing, in India the issue is not on the political agenda yet.
“If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is not present in those standards. It’s not recognised by the Indian government as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Independent research groups across India have conducted studies in different states. But these studies are limited in scope, and there are still very few of them.”
Parineeta Dandekar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a dismal environmental track record”. After it was established in 1986, “the livelihood of fisher folk communities in this region completely collapsed,” she said.
The chemical district is served by a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been at the forefront of complaints.
“The local villages have always stated that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a common occurrence in rural Maharashtra state, the plant cannot function and industries release polluted water directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have sent several warning letters to the plant in recent years.
“That region has seen enough environmental destruction already,” says Dandekar. “If more dangerous companies move in, it’s always a risk.”
This investigation was supported by Journalismfund Europe and IJ4EU
