Guest Blog by Silvana Mossano, Casale Monferrato
August 2011
On December the 10th 2009 the Eternit trial started at the Turin Courts: it is the largest and most important criminal case ever to have been held following an environmental disaster – industrial pollution which caused thousands of victims in the case in point. It was an appalling disaster caused by the incautious use of asbestos which is still reaping its victims. Nor will it cease to have effect after the court case is over: in fact the disease can be latent for decades, the hallmark of the ‘asbestos disease’, that is to say of the fatal cancer that goes by the name of mesothelioma: like a crazy puppeteer playing with the fate of thousands of people causing an endless trickle of deaths although asbestos has been banned in Italy since 1992.
The Eternit Trial gets its name from the multinational which had plants in Italy and in other countries where asbestos cement products were made for decades. The product, asbestos-cement , was widely used because it was fireproof and cheap. It was so widely used that decontamination and its replacement with alternative safe materials is a gigantic task. Products included water pipes (kilometers of pipelines are still in asbestos cement) , sheets and roofs, known in Italian as ‘onduline’ used to cover millions of square meters of industrial plants, public buildings such as schools, hospitals, markets, stations and the like, as well as private dwellings. The peak of mourned deaths is to be found where the materials were produced: not just among the workers of the plants who suffered professional or industrial exposures, but also (and more so now) in the communities suffering from environmental exposure. Having lived in the town where asbestos was manipulated without any due precautions (and even then they might not have been enough): I remember asbestos being carried in truck loads along the winding streets of Casale with no precautions or safety measures, handed out – given or sold very cheaply – to members of the community to mend roads, to insulate football and playing fields for the children, to insulate rood, turning every member of the community, adult or child, into a potential victim.
Casale Monferrato is a town with a population of 35 thousand. It was the ancient and proud capital of the Monferrato region, a land of rolling hills and plains, crossed by the River Po, where the Eternit plant was established in the early 1900s (until 1986) , the oldest and the largest Eternit plant in the country.
Casale Monferrato has become the symbol of the struggle against asbestos: we mourn our dead, over 1600 victims in the town and villages surrounding it, and unfortunately about 50 new mesothelioma cases a year. But as well as mourning wee reacted: this is where the relentless battle started in the 1980s which in 1992 led to the first national law banning asbestos in Italy. Our civil society is symbolized in the Associazione Famigliari Vittime Amianto (The Association of Relatives of the Victims of Asbestos) and we have taken a three-pronged approach: i) decontamination, ii) justice and iii) medical and scientific research.
i) Decontamination. There are still many asbestos cement roofs that have been removed, especially in Casale, less so elsewhere where people are less aware of the risks. There are still lots of such roofs, and they are a source of increasing danger because as time goes by they age and easily flake, releasing the deadly long term fibres. On top of that there are contaminated maverick sites we don’t know about.
ii) Justice. There have been trials against the Eternit management but the Turin one is a trail blazer not just for Italy but in the world over, where asbestos has been used or where unfortunately it is still being processed. The Turin trial will leave a deep mark both in jurisprudence and in the business world: a practical warning, not just an admonition, telling all those involved in the production process to abide by precise rules that place health and safety before profit-making. This applies whether it is asbestos or other material. The other key feature of the trial is that for the first time the real owners of the Eternit are called to justice and they have to answer the indictment of willful intention, that is they were aware of the diseases and deaths they would cause and so far they had managed to stay ‘in hiding’. The accused are the Swiss tycoon Stephan Schmidheiny and the Belgian Baron Louis de Cartier de la Marchienne. Of course being accused is not the same as being found guilty: it will be the court presided over by Justice Casalbore that will say whether or not they were responsible of this disaster, which some consider a ‘permanent disaster’ because its effects and impact will be felt for many years to come. Whatever the court will rule (hopefully by Christmas 2011) having a trial where the ‘owners of the Eternit, the Eternit Bosses’ stand accused is in itself a miracle in itself. Previously it had been unthinkable and it is thanks to the work of Public Prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello (the ‘special PP’ always involved in environmental issues) with the help of the members of his team, his colleagues Sara Panelli and Gianfranco Colace. The owners acted as the mind, the éminence grise, who decided behind the scenes the company strategies which led to the disaster. The second result is that in just over 18 months, having heard Italian and foreign witnesses and experts, in their closing speeches the PPs asked for twenty years’ jail for both of the accused. The injured parties’ lawyers have already spoken – there are over 6,000 people, bodies, institutions and associations, in September we will hear the de Cartier’s and Schmidheiny’s defense lawyers, as well as those defending companies that can be linked to the Belgian and Swiss defendants and which are called in that they are liable in the event of the accused being sentenced to pay to millions of Euros in compensation. It is possible that the court may pronounce its ruling before Christmas. Whatever it may be, nothing will be as it was, no one will forget the painful and heart rendering stories if the widows, the mothers, brothers and sisters who saw the nearest and dearest suffer and die because of the criminal conscious decisions of the industry. In no case will we forget the reading of the top secret papers which the PPs referred to in the court, where in writing, the Eternit owners showed they were well aware of the cancerogenic effects of asbestos. They also listed precise and well paid communication strategies aimed at hiding, mystifying, minimizing the risks the workers and the community underwent. The papers described how trade unionist, local authorities, journalists and reporters operated, and cases when trade unionist, politicians, journalists and even scientists were co-opted and silenced with money. The injured parties’ lawyers stated it ‘was a catastrophe caused by cynicism, the result of an organization aimed at maximizing profit using what was called the ‘white gold’ that is to say asbestos. Unfortunately it is not a disaster which belongs to the past as it drags more and more victims into its perverse whirlpool. We shouldn’t forget that in Italy but also elsewhere on the planet asbestos is still extracted, mined and processed, used reassuring local communities that ‘maybe it used to be dangerous in the past but now with the necessary precautions it is no longer so’. This is what they used to say 30 years ago in Italy and in other countries, which have learnt about the deadly risk at the price of their own lives.
iii) Research. Today’s great hopes are in scientific research involving scientists from all over the world, Just as there is an ‘asbestos multinational’ there is also a’ victims’ multinational’ that has doggedly opposed the former. We now need a ‘multinational of researchers’ to quickly find a treatment and cure mesothelioma. Only then will be able to call ourselves asbestos-free people, free of the mal d’amianto the asbestos disease. Research needs money. Lots. So may the ‘lords and masters’ of asbestos pay, answering the demands of a much stricter court: their consciences.