Pompeii, the Eav project and the smog quadrilateral

Pompeii. This article will be dedicated to an update on the EAV Project, but also to the related problems of urban pollution in the City Center of Pompeii, where the debate between various parties on this Project remains heated. A heated debate without much substance in truth. It shows no signs of dying down between the Administration in office, led by Amitrano, the Consorzio Ferroviario Vesuviano, formerly EAV, ex Circumvesuviana in short, and a citizens' Committee that calls itself "NO sottopassi". The latter brings together several protesting souls and likes to claim to represent about three thousand citizens, but more likely it formally represents more or less about three hundred, still a respectable figure. The subject of the dispute with many voices, almost an orchestra, is the so-called EAV Project, which in practice plans to pass under the railway line with a series of vehicular and pedestrian underpasses. The Committee opposes it with a firm NO, without mediation, proposing the burial, but also the deep trench and even the level crossings in place of all four level crossings to be eliminated. Practically the complete opposite of the EAV Project. The Amitrano Municipal Administration instead is for the Nì, almost Yes, but... with the level crossing guaranteed in the only important level crossing in the city center, that of Via Nolana. In the meantime, EAV itself has said it is willing to review the project, eliminating a few pedestrian underpasses that are too many and/or too long. In short, it is a fluid situation, to use political jargon.

In the meantime, the Conference of Services has been adjourned to a date to be determined. In short ... sine die, to put it clearly. An uncertainty that is played out on the skin of the approximately twenty-five thousand citizens of Pompeii, who represent the silent majority. Should we conclude that Gandhi was right when he said that he was more afraid of a silent majority than of a screaming minority? Maybe Yes. One fact, however, is known to all: every afternoon and until the evening - more or less from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, from Scafati to the Piazza del Santuario and vice versa - hundreds of cars line up to head to the Vesuvian area via the Via Nolana, which for millennia has remained the only route that leads from Pompeii towards the Vesuvius and Nola areas and, therefore, also towards Caserta and Rome. As a result, urban and interurban traffic at the Pompei Est-Scafati motorway toll booth is blocked in a swastika-like fashion. In those four or five hours the City Center in Pompeii and the same access to Scafati become effectively prisoners of an extended line of cars moving at walking pace. Furthermore, the conditions of a gas chamber are created on the macro urban quadrilateral composed of the streets: Lepanto, Parroco Federico, Anastasio Rossi, Piave and Carlo Alberto, with annexed cross streets and pedestrian areas. It is an inferno of sheet metal and exhaust fumes that often also involves the Piazza del Santuario, with repercussions on the entire cinematic network of the City Center of Pompeii.

For those who irresponsibly underestimate this emergency state of affairs, we remind you that a study published about a year ago in the journal Nature claims that pollutants in the environment can influence DNA to the point of modifying it enough for some genes to take over others and thus promote the onset of heart and respiratory diseases. The scientific investigation was coordinated by Philip Awadalla of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Canada. The effects on DNA were tested analytically. The data collected are significant because they were processed on a large audience, composed of over a thousand people. The harmful effects of fine dust and nitrogen and sulfur dioxides, present in urban smog, were identified from DNA analysis. This situation - which has been repeated for decades in the Urban center of Pompeii - must be monitored and studied by the competent health authorities, because there is a risk of developing particular pollution-related diseases in the heart and lungs, the first targets, but also the intestines, kidneys, bones and brain suffer from excessive urban pollution. For some time now, the authoritative Lancet magazine has published studies from which it can be deduced that smog also weakens bones and causes damage to the brain. According to Lancet, one in ten cases of Alzheimer's could be attributable to urban pollution. And it has long been known that lead pollution is the cause of death from hypertension, kidney failure, cardiovascular disease. We do not want to be alarmists, but realistic. Indeed, from these columns we ask that the municipal administration take charge of verifying the data collected by the anti-smog control unit located at the Pompeii sports field, placed there years ago to show off, as if in a shop window. From it, objective data could be drawn to confirm what we have written. And evaluate the serious risks that an entire urban center runs. We must act quickly. And we truly hope that it will not be discovered once again that Pompeii was used only for the international showcase it represents! 

Federico LI Federico