Period+6+-+Seveso

     **    Seveso, Italy      **

Seveso is a city in Italy located in the Province of Milan and the Region of Lombardy. It is the site of an Industrial disaster that took place at 12:37 pm on July 10, 1976. A cloud of chemicals containing dioxin was released from the Industrie Chimiche Meda Societa Azionaria chemical plant in Meda that produced herbicides and about 37,000 people were exposed from a region that stretched from Milan to Lake Como, about a 25 mile stretch of land. Dioxin is a group of about 75 chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds that are created when pesticides are produced. These compounds are highly toxic and carcinogenic and can cause disfiguring skin complaints, birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer. More than 600 people had to be evacuated from their homes and as many as 2000 were treated for dioxin poisoning. The reactor containing some of the chemicals melted as it reached extreme temperatures causing is to leak into the adjacent reactor. The chemicals that then mixed is what caused the cloud of gas that eventually poisoned thousands. Because of this incident, industrial saftey regulations were soon passed in the European Communtiy which were called the Seveso Directive. This imposed much stricter regulations on the industry. The Seveso Directive was updated in 1999 and again ammended in 2005. Today it is referred to as the Seveso II Directive or COMAH Regulations in the United Kingdom. This directive is heavily criticized by many people due to its ineffectiveness to stop problems. It is described as a "risk-management plan", which means that it does not target the source (which in this case would be things like whether or not production of a certain chemical would affect the heath of people, the environment, or even the safety of it.) Despite many attempts to ammend the directive to include new categories of chemicals and substances, and to outlaw certain dangerous substances, there remains many loopholes that allow potentially hazerdous situations to be created. As a result, many chemical companies exploit these loopholes, using them for financial gain.


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