Cancer rates have soared in Casalnuovo di Napoli where burying or burning of waste has poisoned water and land Marzia Caccioppoli moved to Casalnuovo di Napoli a town surrounded by countryside on the outskirts of Naples to get away from the chaos and pollution of the sprawling southern Italian city but I wanted him to grow up in a place where he could breathe clean air,” she said It was 2003 and Caccioppoli had unwittingly moved to the so-called “triangle of death” a vast area to the north-east of Naples where the mafia had established the lucrative business of burying in turn poisoning swathes of farmland and drinking water Rather than living the long and wholesome life his mother had dreamed of for him Marzia Caccioppoli: ‘Antonio was a strong and healthy boy but I wanted him to grow up in a place where he could breathe clean air.’ Photograph: Roberto Salomone/The GuardianThe illegal waste dumping often carried out in cahoots with local police and politicians was made public by a mafia turncoat in the late 1990s around the time the early signs of its effects started to appear: first the farm animals born with deformities especially rare forms of the disease among children which over time has had devastating repercussions on health Caccioppoli was among the 41 plaintiffs who took a case against the Italian state to the European court of human rights where judges recently ruled that despite long being aware of the issue successive governments had failed in their duty to tackle the crisis comprising 90 municipalities with a population of almost 3 million The Strasbourg-based court has given Italy two years to compile a strategy to resolve the issue including setting up an independent monitoring mechanism and a public information platform Caccioppoli got an inkling that something was amiss in Casalnuovo when she noticed more death announcements appearing on walls in the town “They were people in their 30s or 40s,” she said I started to hear of more and more people getting cancer.” Antonio was nine when she noticed a spasm in his leg he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme an aggressive brain cancer that most commonly affects older adults Later that year the government enacted its first decree to address the matter this was a plan to map and decontaminate the affected land toxic waste continued to be buried or burned some government ministers blamed it on the way of life of those living in the area The link between the higher cancer rates and pollution was finally confirmed by Italy’s higher health institute (ISS) in 2021 An ISS report in 2023 showed the death rate in the area was 9% higher than in the rest of the Campania region with people facing a much greater risk of dying from malignant tumours and respiratory diseases Giorgia Meloni’s government is yet to officially respond to the ECHR ruling but during a meeting with parliament’s eco-mafia committee last week acknowledged the state’s shortcomings in dealing with the issue while broaching the prospect of appointing a commissioner There has been no official response from authorities in the Campania region either although one councillor claimed the toxic waste dumps were “a thing of the past” “The silence stinks more than the rubbish,” said Alessandro Cannavacciuolo an environmental activist who was the first plaintiff to sign the complaint presented to the ECHR “Half of my family has been decimated by cancer We can’t afford to wait another 20 years.” Alessandro Cannavacciuolo: ‘We can’t afford to wait another 20 years.’ Photograph: Roberto Salomone/The GuardianIt only takes a visit to the area to witness the scale of the problem Mounds of rubbish line the roads on the outskirts of nearby Acerra containing everything from construction waste and plastic used in car production to electrical cables The stench of recently burned piles lingers lives with a rare brain cancer diagnosed at the age of five Antonietta Moccia: ‘If the environment is sick then we are sick.’ Photograph: Roberto Salomone/The GuardianThe business is thought to have begun in the 1980s would pay the Camorra mafia to dump their hazardous waste at a fraction of what it would have cost them to dispose of it legally The Mafia turncoat Carmine Schiavone revealed the illicit enterprise to the journalist Marilena Natale in 1997 all they’ve done is change the route,” said Natale who has had police protection since 2017 because of threats from the mafia the waste is now being transported to Tunisia Miriam Moccia Photograph: Roberto Salomone/The GuardianValentina Centonze Armando Corsini and Ambrogio Vallo were among the team of lawyers who came together for the case working for free on behalf of the plaintiffs All their families have been touched by cancer while Vallo takes a barrage of medication each day for a brain tumour Centonze said: “The state not only failed to resolve the problem but also omitted to provide knowledge and information [to the public] about the phenomenon – this is another important fact of the ruling.” Centonze said: “This ruling sets a precedent that can be applied in all the other places in Italy where there is a problem with waste dumping and the inertia of administrations to deal with it.” Marilena Natale: ‘We can sue the government but it won’t give us back our dead children.’ Photograph: Roberto Salomone/The GuardianNatale and that the problem is too big to resolve “So we can sue the government but it won’t give us back our dead children.” The Santobono Pausilipon paediatric hospital in Naples sits on the Posillipo hill it has become the last port of hope for children with cancer and their families from across Campania The hospital treated 108 new cancer patients in 2024 eight of whom have died since the beginning of the year “Most come from the affected area,” said Anita Antignano a cardiologist at the hospital who was also diagnosed with cancer in 2021 “Two patients arrived recently in quite a serious condition which demonstrates the extent of the problem the hospital needs to be reinforced with more staff We need to be better equipped to save lives but also to help those who survive and have to live with the consequences Toggle The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government Court tells Italy to get tough with mob flytipping Giles Whittell The European Court of Human Rights has given Italy two years to find a strategy for dealing with a toxic Mafia-run waste dump linked to high local levels of cancer For decades, the Camorra mafia has accepted payments from factories to dump industrial waste that might otherwise be prohibitively expensive to dispose of. Camorra operatives collect waste from automotive and other plants and dump it – and burn it – in plain view along the sides of narrow country roads outside Casalnuovo di Napoli, near Naples. Alessandro Cannavacciulo is a local environmental activist who says half his family has been "decimated" by cancer caused by the burning waste. “For us,” a Naples mafioso boasted in 2008, “rubbish is gold”. A group of more than 40 plaintiffs took the Italian state to the ECHR, which found they had been denied their right to life. 92-year-old cardinal sets the mood for a fractious conclave Haiti nears ‘point of no return’ with no help on the horizon Harvard sets up fight between academia and Trump Trump backs defence secretary who texted wife of plans to bomb Yemen Robots are running half marathons – but no records are under threat Pope Francis was a reformer when his church needed one Whitewebbs oak cut back by Toby Carvery was ‘more significant than Sycamore Gap tree’ Fewer migrants are trying to get into Europe Supreme Court rules definition of woman is based on biological sex Denmark looks to Ukraine for attack drone training Britain’s crumbling bridges pose a weighty problem Israel’s new problem: reservists who don’t want to fight A free newsletter from Tortoise. Take once a day for greater clarity. Google Play Store Follow: The dates displayed for an article provide information on when various publication milestones were reached at the journal that has published the article activities on preceding journals at which the article was previously under consideration are not shown (for instance submission Science of the Total EnvironmentCitation Excerpt :Current research on enhancing the reliability of urban flood simulation based on satellite images has been focused mainly on flood vulnerability assessment and flood risk mapping (Khosravi et al. By extracting flood-related surface data using satellite images the inputs are transformed into specific data representations employed to analyze the leading causes of floods and urban flood risk characteristics and develop a classification or a regression model for flood sensitivity (Allocca et al. and long short-term memory (LSTM) (Fang et al. Geoscience FrontiersCitation Excerpt :Given these AUC values the Stacking based RF-XGBoost model was the most influential ensemble technology to improve the prediction performance of classifier models based on homogeneous models This model can ultimately include other curves in the training or verification phase and be regarded as “dominant” (Allocca et al. the occurrence probabilities S of landslides were obtained by different models (Fig All content on this site: Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page with significant time savings for those heading further south.” However it is estimated that the number of passengers will increase when the Naples-Bari high-speed rail link opens The inauguration will be held today in the presence of Transportation Minister Graziano Delrio Campania Regional President Vincenzo De Luca it is scheduled to open to passenger traffic onJune 11 Image: rendering of the Naples Afragola station The Bibliomotocarro will arrive in the province of Napoli il 4 October 2019: will stop at casalnuovo and will tour the schools of the city throughout the day is a true personality of Southern Italy: since he retired he leaves his Matera to take books to the children of provincial schools where there are few libraries and very few libraries Thanks to his commitment to keeping young people's interest in culture alive Antonio La Cava was awarded this year by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella who appointed him Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic To celebrate the arrival in the city of the Bibliomotocarro la Giacomo Leopardi Social Library will make available to the city through the library loan all the works of Gianni Rodari, the children's writer to whom Casalnuovo will title the 2020 edition of the literary prize “Una Città Che Scrive” we earn a commission from qualifying purchases through ticketing links This commission does not entail any additional price for the user.