toxic cargoes

Are the mysterious and illegal rings of ships poisoning the Mediterranean?

By Madosri Mukherjee

The Italian government announced in October 2009 that the shipwreck discovered off the southwestern edge of the country was the "Catania", a passenger ship that sank in World War I, and not the "Konski", a cargo ship loaded with radioactive waste, as claimed by the regional authorities of neighboring Calabria. But only a few of the locals calmed down after hearing the announcement, says Mikael Leonardi from the University of Calabria. He and others claim that the missing "Konsky" is still out there somewhere, one of many ships, loaded with toxic waste, sunk by criminal organizations in the Mediterranean. Such a shocking allegation, if proven true, will not only harm the tourism and fishing industries along this peaceful coast, but will also endanger the health of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean.

The expenses involved in the processing and safe storage of the waste emitted by the chemical, pharmaceutical and other industries reach hundreds, even thousands of dollars per ton, a cost that greatly increases the profitability of illegal waste disposal. According to the Italian environmental organization Legambiente, some garbage haulers operating from southern Italy use the Mediterranean Sea as a landfill. Physicist Massimo Scalia from the University of Rome, La Spezia, who chaired two parliamentary committees that discussed illegal waste dumping, admits that "no sunken ship containing toxic or radioactive waste has yet been discovered," but according to him other evidence shows that its existence is "beyond any reasonable doubt" .

Scalia claims that 39 ships were sunk under questionable circumstances from 1979 to 1995 and that in each case the crew abandoned the ship long before it sank. According to Legambiente, in the 80s and early 90s, two ships disappeared mysteriously in the Mediterranean every year, on average, and that the number rose to 9 rings a year from 1995. Paolo Gervaudo, a journalist at the daily Il-Manifesto who is helping with the investigations, identified 74 suspicious shipwrecks, 20 of which are very suspicious in his eyes. (The documentation goes back to 2001)

A notable example of a questionable sinking is the ship Julie Russo that washed ashore in December 1990 near the city of Amantea after a failed attempt to sink it, according to researchers. The cargo was brought ashore, and is suspected to have been buried in the ground. In October 2009, a report by the Italian Ministry of the Environment stated that the district authorities had discovered hazardous materials in the nearby river valley, including all buried concrete that contained very high concentrations of mercury, cobalt, selenium, and thallium, and that emitted significant radioactive radiation typical of artificial radioactive materials. Authorities also found marble grains mixed with thousands of cubic meters of soil, which were contaminated with heavy metals and the radioactive isotope cesium 137, a typical waste product of nuclear reactors. The collection of evidence therefore indicates that Julie Russo was loaded, among other things, with radioactive waste, which was sealed in concrete and whose traces were obscured using marble powder (which absorbs radioactive radiation).

The increase in the rate of drownings is in clear accordance with the increasing tightening of the international control over the disposal of waste. The first suspicious drowning, in 1979, happened a year after the Barcelona Convention came into force, limiting the discharge of pollutants into the Mediterranean Sea. In the decades that followed, the regulations were expanded by additional treaties, a process that culminated in 1993 in an amendment to the London Convention on Landfilling Waste, which prohibited dumping radioactive waste of any kind into the sea, and in 1995 in an amendment to the Basel Convention, which prohibited the countries of the industrialized world from burying its toxic waste on the territory of countries are developing The laws destroyed the ambitious plans of one company, Oceanic Disposal Management, based in the British Virgin Islands, to dump tens of thousands of cubic meters of radioactive waste on the seabed off the coast of Africa. Andreas Bernstorf, who at the time headed Greenpeace's advocacy campaign against the trade in toxic waste, reports that the number of plans to send such waste by sea to Africa has dropped precipitously, and today he insists on one attempt per year at most. The sharp decline coincides with the sudden and alarming increase in the rate at which ships sink in the Mediterranean.

Despite the deep concern in southern Italy, efforts to locate the shipwrecks and identify their cargo are proceeding slowly. It's an expensive operation, says Scaolia, and it requires "serious involvement of judges and politicians", which apart from a few "worthy exceptions" are not found. The fear of violence is also apparently delaying the investigation. In 1994, the Italian television reporter Ilaria Alpi and the photographer Miren Hervatin were shot to death near the city of Mogadishu, after they went on the path of dumping hazardous waste in Somalia, the political disorder that prevails there does not allow enforcement.

Somalia can serve as an example of the health hazards that Italians may face. "My committee heard from Somalis who testified that many in that area had symptoms of poisoning, and some died," Scalia says, referring to the stretch of main road along which Alfie and Heroine saw the dumping of toxic materials. The tsunami of December 2004 swept huge metal containers from the seabed and dumped them on the shores of Somalia, which proves that the coastal waters of this country also received questionable garbage. A UN report blames fumes rising from these unidentified objects for causing internal bleeding and the death of locals.

In April 2007, the Calabrian authorities temporarily banned fishing off the city of Cetraro (where, according to a defector from the Calabrian 'Ndrangetta mafia, the Koneski resides) due to dangerous levels of heavy metals on the seabed. A study revealed that around Amantea, cancer death rates between 1992 and 2001 exceeded the rates in the surrounding areas. And an equally alarming increase has occurred in recent years in the number of hospitalizations due to certain malignant diseases.

"Almost all coastal areas of our country may be dangerous," warned 28 lawmakers from the opposition parties in a debate held on October 1, 2009 demanding the location of the sunken ships and the safe storage of their contents. Until investigators uncover the truth about the sunken ships, suspicion and anxiety will continue to haunt the shores of the Mediterranean.

Madosri Mukherjee wrote the forthcoming book "Churchill's Secret War", which describes the British colonialist policies that caused famine during World War II (Basic Books, 2010).