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Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts

Thursday, July 10, 2014

European environmental priorities: Eliminate Asbestos Related Disease by 2015

Air pollution, climate change and chemicals pose key environmental risks to people’s health that require political action in the European Region, according to members of the European Environment and Health Ministerial Board (EHMB). EHMB held its fifth meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania on 1 July 2014.

EHMB members committed themselves to taking concrete action in the near future to address these priority issues. EHMB will:
  • place the elimination of diseases from asbestos exposure and the implementation of the new Minamata Convention on Mercury at the core of negotiations with European countries, in line with European Member States’ commitment in 2010 to eliminate asbestos-related diseases by 2015;
  • support the adoption of a global resolution on air quality, initiated by France, Norway and other countries, in 2015; and
  • contribute to the WHO Conference on Health and Climate (to be held in August 2014 in Geneva, Switzerland) and the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (to be held in 2015in Paris, France).
Members of the EHMB consider that working with the European Union (EU) and its agencies is of high strategic importance to perform these tasks. In particular, they agreed to establish solid collaboration with the European Commission, the new European Parliament and the countries holding the EU presidency in 2015–2017. In addition, they laid out a plan of action to strengthen links between multilateral environmental agreements relevant to the implementation of the commitments made at the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, held in Parma, Italy in 2010.

Plans for the Sixth Conference are being developed. EHMB provided guidance in identifying the main themes – air pollution, climate change and chemicals – while the European Environment and Health Task Force (EHTF) will engage with all 53 countries in the WHO European Region to align priorities, develop targets and reach an agreement on the desired outcomes.

A mid-term review will assess countries’ progress between the 2010 Conference in, and the next in 2016. The review will take place on 10–13 November 2014 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

At the meeting in Vilnius, four new members of the EHMB – the health ministers of Croatia, Georgia, Lithuania and Spain – assumed their seats, following their election by the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. Dr Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Minister of Health of Lithuania, and Mr Amir Peretz, Minister of Environmental Protection of Israel, were elected co-chairs. Croatia and Ukraine each offered to host a meeting to support the European environment and health process in 2015 and 2016.

EHMB’s sixth meeting will take place in February 2015 in Madrid, Spain.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Asbestos Victims Ask Yale to Revoke an Honorary Degree


An Italian organization representing victims of asbestos exposure has asked Yale University to rescind an honorary degree awarded to the owner of the company they once worked for.

In the mid-1970s, Swiss billionaire Stefan Schmidheiny took over his family’s business. The Eternit company had plants around the world that produced asbestos cement products. The largest was in Casale Monferrato, Italy.

Connecticut lawyer Christopher Meisenkothen represents shipyard workers and boiler makers who worked with asbestos here in the U.S., and later developed diseases like asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. He is handling the Italian request to Yale, pro bono.

Meisenkothen described notes from an Eternit company meeting in the 1970s. "Clearly," he said, "they were acknowledging in 1976 that the workers were at risk. The plant continued to use asbestos for many years after that. They could have given the workers respiratory protection, [or] installed exhaust fans. And the worker testimony from workers at the time consistently indicates that there were no serious precautions taken in the plant."

Two years later, Schmidheiny began to dismantle the company's asbestos processing concern. He went on to use his wealth to support eco-friendly sustainable development in other parts of the world.

In 2012, Schmidheiny was tried in absentia in Italy. He was found guilty of causing the deaths of thousands of people in Casale Monferrato, and has been sentenced to 18 years...


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Monday, December 9, 2013

Deadly Factory Fire Bares Racial Tensions in Italy

Fashion safety was the catalyst for the US workers' compensation program in 1911 following the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire in NY. Internationally it appears that not much has changed over a century as workers' continue to work in unsafe conditions throughout the world. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

PRATO, Italy — Dozens of bouquets block the entrance to the Teresa Moda outlet and factory where seven Chinese workers died last Sunday in a fire that swept through the establishment where they worked and lived.
Enlarged photos of the seven victims, two women and five men, have been affixed to the door under a handwritten sign that reads: “Sorrow Has No Color.” Behind police barricades, in soggy piles, are charred bolts of cloth, mountains of plastic hangers and garbage bags full of newly cut garment pieces.
The building, which houses Teresa Moda, a wholesale distributor which also prepared clothing for assembly lines, did not have emergency exits, officials said. Windows were blocked by bars. Officials believe that a camp stove used for cooking probably caused the fire, in which two others were seriously hurt.
It took calamity to fan national outrage at the low-cost business model that took root here 20 years ago and that has transformed the economy of this Tuscan town 12 miles north of Florence.
But for officials who have tried to get a grip on the problem, “a tragedy is always just around the corner,” said Stefano Bellandi, the local secretary for the CISL, one of Italy’s main unions.
The fire at Teresa Moda, and the uproar that followed, exposed the complicated, and at times tense, cohabitation in Prato of Italian residents and Chinese immigrants, who now own nearly 45 percent of the city’s manufacturing businesses.
Law...
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Saturday, October 19, 2013

A Global Asbestos Battle Touches Yale

Today's post was shared by Linda Reinstein and comes from www.courant.com

That Stephan Schmidheiny has played a huge role in environmental matters around the world over the last 37 years is not up for debate.

What is hotly contested about the Swiss industrialist-turned-philanthropist and author is whether he's rightly portrayed as a hero or a villain. And Yale University, which gave Schmidheiny an honorary doctorate in 1996, is caught in the middle — with that degree as a global political football.

In 1976, when he was 29 years old, Schmidheiny took over the Swiss Eternit Group, a business founded by his grandfather. The company had become one of Europe's largest asbestos firms, making cement products girded with the deadly mineral throughout the continent and in Brazil. Schmidheiny was 29 and a newly minted lawyer.

Within 10 years, the Italian arm of the business, with five factories, closed in bankruptcy.

After Eternit, Schmidheiny, born rich and growing richer through ties to Switzerland's best known companies, turned his attention to ecologically sustainable development. He created a charity and endowed it with more than $1 billion, launched a nonprofit foundation that operates in 17 Latin American countries and founded a global business group dedicated to private-sector environmentalism.
That was the Stephan Schmidheiny that Yale feted, and not just with an honorary degree. In 2000, Schmidheiny was a keynote speaker at the centennial of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which...
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Wednesday, October 9, 2013

UN rights expert urges EU to focus on migrants' rights

Today's post is shared from Jurist.org

The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants [official website] Francois Crepeau urged [press release] the EU on Monday to adopt a new approach to migration that focuses on the rights of migrants. The discussion was centered around last week's sinking of the Lampedusa [BBC report] off the coast of Italy, which claimed the lives of 194 Eritrean and Somali migrants. Crepeau visited Italy in May to study the external border management of the EU and its impact on human rights of migrants and urged [JURIST report] EU member states to prioritize human rights in the development of their migration policies. "This tragedy reminds us of the importance of that recommendation," Crepeau stated. "If countries continue to criminalize irregular migration, without adopting new legal channels for migration, especially for low-skilled migrants ... the number of migrants risking their lives on dangerously overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels over perilous sea routes can only increase."

Last month UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay [official profile] called on governments [JURIST report] to create human rights-based policies addressing migration. In May Crepeau visited both sides of the border in Turkey, Greece, Tunisia and Italy [official reports] to...


Thursday, September 5, 2013

Italian Plant’s Abrupt Shutdown Stirs a Debate

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com


Like it or not, Italy’s labor force recognizes that the long manufacturing slump may make factory closings inevitable. But this, they say, is no way to do it.

At the start of August, the 30 workers of Hydronic Lift, an elevator components company, wished one another well and left on long-planned summer vacations. But when they returned to work three weeks later, they found the gates bolted with chains and padlocks. The company has not disclosed its plans.

“Not to be emotional, but if a worker goes on holiday with the fear that he might not come back to a job, well, that can cause serious damage to one’s peace of mind,” Alberto Larghi of the metalworkers’ trade union said. “Events like this can ruin vacations for all workers.”

It was only the latest in a headline-grabbing series of factory closures in Italy that the metalworkers’ union, FIOM-CGIL, which represents the workers at Hydronic Lift, denounced as the “popular sport among businessmen in the summer of 2013: transforming the summer shutdown into a definitive termination, with no forewarning, taking advantage that the employees are absent.”

Summer sport is a bit of an overstatement; there have been only a handful of cases, including a factory near Modena where the boss moved the production line for electronic components to Poland under the cover of the August doldrums. But they have stirred a national debate in a country struggling to...
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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Great Asbestos Trial - The Call For More Criminal Prosecutions

Documentary Film Highlights the Global Health and Environmental Crisis of Asbestos; Call for Further Criminal Prosecutions

Anti-asbestos campaigners have urged more criminal prosecutions against the global directors of asbestos corporations following the recent conviction of European industrialists Stephen Schmidheiny and Baron Cartier de Marchienne in Italy. The call was made this weekend at the 8th Annual International Asbestos Awareness Conference put on by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and attended by activists from around the world.

ADAO has organized a special screening of the documentary film, Dust: The Great Asbestos Trial. The screening, made possible with the help of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, will take place Wednesday, April 4th at 7 pm at the Ray Stark Theatre at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, CA. Directed by Niccoló Bruna and Andrea Prandstaller, the film tells the story of the groundbreaking Eternit trial in Italy, in which Schmidheiny and Cartier de Marchienne were sentenced to prison for having caused the deaths of over 1,000 asbestos victims.

“ADAO is delighted to present this daring and groundbreaking documentary at USC to bring attention to both the superb film and the global issue of asbestos, which has caused the largest manmade occupational and environmental disaster in history,” commented Linda Reinstein, President/CEO, ADAO. ”Other countries should follow Italy’s example and prosecute these people, who have knowingly exposed tens of thousands of people to lethal doses of a product they know kills.”

Following the screening will be a panel discussion hosted by ADAO that includes Dr. Michael Renov (Professor of Critical Studies and SCA Vice Dean, Academic Affairs), Niccoló Bruna (“Dust” Director), and Linda Reinstein (President/CEO, ADAO).

“Dust: The Great Asbestos Trial is a very accomplished film on a tough topic. I have seen many films on comparable topics but rarely have I seen such a broad and complex topic or such diverse locations and characters handled with such grace and concision,” comments Michael Renov, author of Theorizing Documentary (1993) and The Subject of Documentary (2004) and professor at the University of Southern California.

Asbestos is a known human carcinogen and exposure can cause mesothelioma and lung, gastrointestinal, laryngeal, and ovarian cancers, as well as non-malignant lung and pleural disorders. The World Health Organization estimates that 107,000 workers around the world will die each year of an asbestos-related disease, equaling 300 deaths per day.

Film info and trailer: http://www.graffitimultimedia.it/GraffitiDoc/Scheda.aspx?ID=5

Campaign website: http://asbestosinthedock.ning.com/

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For over 3 decades the Law Offices of Jon L. Gelman1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered work related accident and injuries.

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Monday, February 13, 2012

Pair sentenced to 16 years in Italy asbestos trial

Pair sentenced to 16 years in Italy asbestos trial - Telegraph:

Prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello is surrounded by media at the Turin courthouse, Italy
Stephan Schmidheiny, the former owner of a company making Eternit fibre cement, and Jean-Louis Marie Ghislain de Cartier de Marchienne, a major shareholder, were sentenced in absentia after being found guilty of causing an environmental disaster and failing to comply with safety regulations.