Italian 'Nuclear waste' transport ship sunk by Mafia?

A shipwreck off the coast of south-west Italy is being investigated amid concerns that it contains 'nuclear toxic waste'. Not just that, but a government informant believes the ship is one of several deliberately sunk by the Mafia in order to bypass laws on toxic waste disposal.

The sunken vessel was found 30km off the Italian coast and is currently being tested for radioactivity. Robotic submersibles have been dispatched down to the wreck to determine how hazardous the wreck could be to Italian waters.

According to the informant Francesco Fonti, who is from the Calabrian mafia known as the ''Ndrangheta', the crime syndicate have muscled in on the lucrative business of radioactive waste disposal in recent years. However, instead of meeting the country's stringent waste disposal laws, the Mafia had simply sunk the vessel out at sea.

The head of the environment agency in Calabria, Silvestro Greco, says there are plenty of legal places to dispose of dangerous waste in Europe, however for the Mafia it is simply cheaper to put the waste of a ship and scuttle it.

"Given the amount of special and industrial waste that is daily produced, there should be endless queues in front of these disposal plants, which instead only work at about 30 per cent of their potential," he said.

"But the industrial waste must go somewhere. Clearly there is a lot of illegal waste disposal. At the root, it is a dismal question of money."

It is also reported that at least two other ships containing hundreds of barrels of toxic waste have been sunk in similar conditions by the criminal organisation.

Fonti claims mobsters made millions of dollars illegally dumping radioactive and other toxic wastes for northern Italian businesses.

The main concern is of cause what this means for the population along the coastline and how the toxic waste could affect health conditions.

Dr Marian Lloyd-Smith of the Australian National Toxics Network believes that if it is confirmed the waste is radioactive, the results could be devastating.

"If it is, as we suspect, medical waste, then there will be a whole range of heavy metals, there will be chlorinated chemicals, and there may even be radioactive waste," she said, speaking to ABC News.

"All of those are sort of things that hang around for many, many years to come.

Media reports suggest there has also been a sharp increase in cancer diagnoses in some areas of the Calabrian coast.

The 'Ndrangheta' is one of the most powerful Mafia families in Italy, situated in the rural areas of Calabria. It operates independently from the infamous Sicilian Cosa Nostra.

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