Paper short abstract:

The citizens of Taranto, Italy, co-exist with one of the largest steel plants of Europe. Amidst industrial interests, political strategies, elusive epidemiological data and a collapsing welfare system, the community knowledge-sharing practices uncover the health effects of pollution.

Paper long abstract:

In 2022, a UN report included the Southern Italian town of Taranto as one of the world's "sacrifice zones". These are areas where the population suffers from the health consequences of living with high concentrations of toxicants, often originating from the proximity with an industrial site. Taranto's "Ex-Ilva" is a steel-plant larger than the town itself. The pollution deriving from the industrial site has destroyed entire ecosystems in the local area, compromising the local food production industry. More crucially, toxic exposure has caused an alarming increase in the rate of cancer and other cardiopulmonary diseases in the local population.

The correlation between industrial steel production and ill health, however, remains a terrain of uncertainty and debated truths. Ex-Ilva is the biggest steel production site of Europe, employing several thousands of people. International corporations have interest in keeping the site open, whilst domestic politics remains entangled in partisan decisions. More recent epidemiological data appear to counter the fact that Taranto is more polluted than other Italian city.

Toxic chemicals are often invisible particles- and so seem to be the rights of the local population in the complex entanglements of capital, politics and ecological disaster. However, the community finds intimate, mundane ways to share their knowledge on the effects that chemicals have on their bodies and lives. These forms of epistemological circulation involve medical practitioners, activists and young people in a tireless- albeit quiet- fight to objectivise their everyday experience and seek a more just future.