Despite profound concern in southern Italy, efforts to find the wrecks and identify their cargo have been slow. The endeavor is expensive, Scalia notes, and requires “serious engagement by magistrates and politicians”—which, but for “a few honorable exceptions,” has been lacking. Fear of violence may also have hindered investigation. In 1994 Italian television journalist Ilaria Alpi and cameraman Miran Hrovatin were shot dead near Mogadishu, after they picked up the hazardous waste trail in Somalia, where political upheaval has kept the country from enforcing controls.

That African nation possibly holds clues to the kinds of health hazards Italians might face. “My committee heard from Somalians who said many people in that area had symptoms of poisoning and some died,” Scalia attests, referring to a stretch of highway along which Alpi and Hrovatin may have witnessed the offloading of toxic substances. The tsunami of December 2004 dredged up giant metal containers from the seabed and placed them on Somali beaches—proving that the country’s coastal waters had also received questionable trash. A United Nations report blamed fumes from these unidentified objects for internal hemorrhages and deaths of local people.

In April 2007 Calabrian authorities had temporarily halted fishing in waters off Cetraro (where the Cunski lies, according to a turncoat from the ’Ndrangheta mafia) because of dangerous levels of heavy metals in marine sediment. In the region around Amantea, mortality from cancer between 1992 and 2001 exceeded that in neighboring areas, a study found; just as worrisome, hospitalizations for certain malignancies have risen in recent years.

“Almost all the coastal regions of our country may be compromised,” warned 28 Italian legislators from opposition parties on October 1, in a parliamentary motion demanding that the sunken ships be located and their contents secured. Until investigators can salvage the truth about the shipwrecks, suspicion and anxiety will plague the Mediterranean shores.

*Erratum: (1/22/10): These sentences were changed after publication. They originally misidentified the Rosso as the Jolly Rosso.

[Note: This story was originally printed with the title "Poisoned Shipments".]

This article was originally published with the title Poisoned Shipments.

10 Comments

1. 1. MCMalkemus 09:48 AM 1/29/10

   When the profit of a struggling company is involved, the environmental impact of illegal activities matters little.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. mpainesyd 04:21 PM 1/29/10

   This reads like the plot from the 1993 Ben Elton TV-movie Stark - scary that it is true

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. Scottsman 04:38 PM 1/29/10

   The world's oceans make far too tempting a location to put dangerous wastes "out of sight and out of mind" as it were.
   
   The most obvious and logical solution should be for nuclear-capable countries to ban the transportation of dangerous wastes by water. This would help to prevent these governments and companies from taking the easy way out, and - because transportation by land would be prohibitive in its costs - would cause these individuals to more closely consider where these facilities and their waste disposal sites are being built.
   
   BUT, wherever you see the words "prohibitive in its cost" you will find that most reasonable people become unwilling to effect said change.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. Todd-Charles 04:58 PM 1/29/10

   I met a candid captain in Murmansk in 1992, who told of crews drilling holes in large cubes of stainless steel floating off the coast. Purpose? To sink them. Content (unknown to the workers) Radioactive waste. This dumping ground is common knowledge, but the methods, for not-heavy-enough cubes, are Franz Kafka stuff. We humans are very wise.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. ralklem 09:38 AM 1/30/10

   We humans deserve what is comming. We did it to ourselves.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. ben courtice 12:34 AM 1/31/10

   Invite the Somali pirates to police the ships. They seem pretty civilised as far as pirates go - better than, say, the Australian government anyway. And their activity partly started in order to regulate similar illegal waste dumping off their own coast. See http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/791/40758

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

7. 7. g-minor in reply to ralklem 09:59 AM 1/31/10

   Lamentably, we're doing it to the rest of what used to be called "all creation," as well.
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

8. 8. dboardman 02:29 AM 2/1/10

   Hello everybody. I have collaborated with Paolo Gerbaudo designing and publishing an information-visualization website where you can browse further data regarding the "lost ships" in the Mediterranean Sea. If you are interested to know more, please go to:
   
   http://www.infondoalmar.info
   
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

9. 9. robertbudvapor 07:56 PM 2/1/10

   Read Revelations if you want to find out what happens next /
   Revelations chapter 16, verse 3 ...

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

10. 10. robertbudvapor 04:59 PM 4/14/10

    Nostradamus predicts an unusual disaster in this area :
    [from Century II, quatrain 4 ]/
    "From Monaco to near Sicily
    the entire coast will be desolated
    There will remain there no suburb, city, or town...///"

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this