He had promoted the purchase of the struggling plant and others in Europe and the U.S. Italian prosecutors eventually brought criminal charges against more than two dozen people, including Solvay executives, and the plant’s former owner, accusing them of intentionally poisoning the groundwater and failing to clean up the site.Īmong those charged: de Laguiche, a member of Solvay’s founding family. Local authorities declared a public health emergency. In 2008, almost three years after Mancini’s storeroom discovery, environmental inspectors found hexavalent chromium at more than 40 times the legal limit in wells near the plant.
Rather than disclose problems to authorities, company employees and contractors submitted reports that minimized the pollution and its potential harm, according to witness testimony as well as documents seized by Italian investigators and later reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Company managers working under the architect of the acquisition, a senior Solvay executive named Bernard de Laguiche, were supposed to oversee the operation and report on its progress to Italian authorities.īut the cleanup and repairs lagged. In 2001, a new owner, the Belgian chemical giant Solvay SA, promised that it would clean the site and prevent leaks.
The plant later began using fluorinated compounds - also toxic - to make heat-resistant plastics and nonstick and water-repellent coatings for cookware and fabrics. Harmful chemicals involved in production were buried on the site and leaked into the groundwater. Over its nearly 120-year history, the Italian plant produced all manner of toxic products, including synthetic dyes and the pesticide DDT. “They told me not to worry … that it wasn’t my business,” he said. When Mancini complained about the health threat to workers, his plant manager and his lab chief downplayed the risks, Mancini later testified. A test revealed that the substance was brimming with hexavalent chromium, a heavy metal known to cause cancer.
ALFRED DUPONT SCANDAL CRACK
In a storeroom in a separate building, he found sludge - also yellowish - oozing from a crack in a baseboard.
On a cold December day in 2005, a lab analyst named Pietro Mancini descended into the basement of an aging chemical factory in the northern Italian town of Spinetta Marengo, where he discovered something curious: a coating of yellow dust on the walls and floor, left behind, apparently, by melted snow that had flooded the room.
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