A large fire He broke out in the plant for the treatment of waste Ecomac In Augusta, in Sicily, around 10:30 on Saturday 5 July. To catch fire was plastic material, which produced a vast cloud of black smoke also visible from Syracuse and Catania. The firefighters rushed to the scene, which have yet to end the shutdown operations. At the moment, neither the causes of the fire nor the effects on air quality are still known. The mayor of Augusta, Giuseppe Di Maresigned an order of the accident on the day of the accident indoor refuge for the protection of public health, withdrawn yesterday afternoon July 8. The accident follows three years later a similar fire in the same plant.
What (not) we know about the pollutants issued by the fire in Augusta
The technicians of ARPA SICILY For monitoring air quality in the areas potentially exposed to the effects of the fire, but at the moment the results of the analyzes have not yet been made public. The first statements of Arpa Sicilia, released on July 6, speak of “low concentrations of volatile organic compounds attributable to the fireincluding acetone, benzene, toluene, methacrylate and acrolein ». The values measured by the monitoring stations of the area do not seem to have changed very much following the fire, except for the monitoring station of Prioloa short distance from the factory and underground when the fire broke out, which detected time concentrations of benzene (C6H6) above the threshold on 5 July and 6 July (respectively 36.4 and 26.3 micrograms per cubic metercompared to a threshold of 20 micrograms per cubic meter).
The Ecomac plant mainly treats plastic and glassy waste, therefore it is not subjected to Seveso directive For the prevention of the risks of relevant industrial accidents, which mainly concerns the plants in which dangerous chemicals are present. However, plastic combustion also produces compounds that involve serious risks for the environment and for human health, such as the dioxins they Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
The previous one and doubts about safety in the Ecomac plant
The Prosecutor of Syracuse has opened an investigation to determine the causes of the fire. The investigations will be able to begin as soon as the shutdown is finished, but at the moment there are Doubts about security measures in the Ecomac plant and on the quality of the controls. This is in fact the second large fire that broke out in the plant in three years: also the August 22, 2022 A large stake affected the plastic material in the shed, it seems because of a lightning that would have hit the system.
“Two similar episodes cannot happen in the same system in such a short time something is not working,” he said of a sea, which he also asked transparency on environmental datastill not published four days after the accident. The Ecomac disposal site is not helpful, in which no information is found on how the system is made and how the safety management is organized in the Augusta plant.
