The Solvay factory beyond beachgoers at Rosignano Solvay, Italy, on Sept. 6.
Photographer: Francesca Volpi/Bloomberg
Battle Brews in Tuscany Over Health Impact of Chemical Waste on Beach
City leaders are divided over a plan to study whether waste discharged by Solvay’s Rosignano factory has made people sick.
When a 2017 study found that the Tuscan town of Rosignano had elevated death rates from Alzheimer’s and other ailments, some residents began to ask if it might be linked to the milky discharge pumped onto its famous White Beaches by Brussels-based chemical giant Solvay SA.
For 65 years up to 2005, Solvay’s local soda ash plant had discharged waste containing a total of more than 400 tons of mercury, a neurotoxic heavy metal, directly onto the beach in dissolved and particulate form, Tuscany’s environmental protection agency (ARPAT) determined in 2008. Executives at the $10-billion multinational have long maintained that its emissions aren’t a danger to humans or animals, containing only non-harmful, trace amounts of mercury and other metals.