"Naples Waste Linked to Death and Disease"

Piles of trash building up in Naples have filled the air with a putrid stench and spoiled the view for tourists, but the city's waste crisis may also be killing its people...

Besides fouling the port city's image and adding to risks to the Mediterranean from from sewage and pollution, the waste is in some areas associated with higher death rates and certain types of cancer, studies have shown.

A government-appointed former police chief has been given army backup for a four-month quest to end a crisis which the Italian government declared a 'state of emergency' in 1994, but local people say years of illegal dumping is poisoning them...

Medical journal Lancet Oncology in 2004 dubbed part of the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital, "the triangle of death" because the air, soil and water are polluted by high levels of cancer-causing toxins believed to have come from waste.

Research released last year by Italy's National Research Council found that among people living closest to the least-regulated waste-disposal sites -- where trash is dumped in fields or burnt without any controls -- the mortality rate was 12 percent greater than the norm for women and 9 percent greater for men.

Fatal liver cancers were much more common -- up 29 percent for women and 19 percent for men in the most at-risk areas -- and there were huge increases in congenital malformations of the nervous and urinary systems...

Naples' failure to deal with its own household waste hit crisis point at the end of December when all refuse collection stopped as waste dumps had reached capacity, leaving people with no choice but to throw it onto the streets.

Political ineptitude, corruption and crime have conspired to stop the creation of a modern, safe disposal system. People despair of their politicians and are suspicious of government schemes -- like a new incinerator -- aimed at ending the crisis.

Like many in and around the 'triangle of death', those in Pianura say their council-run landfill was not properly managed and became a tipping site for hazardous waste.

But an even bigger source of pollution is the Camorra, the Naples mafia which runs a lucrative line in dumping and burning rubbish illegally.

More than domestic trash, the Camorra focuses on disposal of industrial waste which it brings to Campania from Italy's rich north -- one of a string of crimes against the environment earning the mafia an estimated 6 billion euros a year.

"The Camorra continues to control the cycle of industrial waste that comes from the north of Italy," said Michele Buonomo of Legambiente, a campaign group which closely monitors organised crime's assault on the environment.

"That's why practically every night in vast areas of Campania, waste arrives to be burned."