“One more Day” is an ongoing project aiming to investigate the current situation in a part of the territory of Puglia region called Salento, in the south of Italy, seriously hit by athmosferic and environmental pollution due to the coexistence of the Enipower petrolchemical pole in the industrial area of Brindisi and of the Enel Federico II coal power plant, just 13km further south in the fraction of Cerano.

Salento has always been a land destinated to agricolture, but lately it has been conquered by multinational companies that, whereas offering a job to citizens, have occupied the area and destroyed one of the most delicate balance in terms of environment and biodiversity in the italian peninsula.

Both stations are located along the coastline close to cultivated fields, farms and fish crops. It’s easy to imagine the impact of the chemical and toxic waste, of the fine dust, resulting from the industrial process, on the local population.

In particular the Micorosa waste dump, with its 50 hectars of toxic mud, located inside a protected regional natural park, appears to be one of the largest and most polluted rubbish dump in Europe.

The chimneys and the conveyor belt for coal in Cerano instead, contaminate the cultivations of lettuce, wheat and artichokes adjacent to the plant. The impact on public health is huge, and if on one side we are talking about an environmental distaster, on the other a sanitary emergency is growing day by day.

Yet in 1990, according to law no 305 of 1989, Brindisi and the neighboring municipalities were classified as “areas of high environmental risk”.

In 2000 a decree from the Ministry of the Environment has included this area among the sites of national interest for remediation (SIN), identifying a surface area of approximately 5,700 hectares of land and 5,600 hectares of sea including, in addition to the industrial zone, also the port and a strip of coastline.

However, only in 2017, after years of silence and reticence from the two companies, the epidemiological survey conducted by Dr. Forastiere at the lead of a team of doctors and researchers, finally highlighted the real relationship between polluting agents and the various diseases affecting the area’s residents.