PFAS e inquinamento delle falde acquifere venete: la tutela civilistica fra danno ambientale e azioni risarcitorie collettive
Creators: name: Rasia, Veronica
Publisher: name: Universit� degli Studi di Trento. Facolt� di Giurisprudenza
Year: 2020

description: The aim of this study is to analyse the negative impacts of environmental disasters on the individual?s personal sphere exploring the case of PFAS contamination of the water supply of the Veneto region, to understand how the holders of severely compromised subjective legal positions from this contamination can seek compensation litigating their case.
Following an examination of how the impact of globalisation and technological progress triggered a new environmental sensitivity, the study starts analysing the steps that shaped the fundamental notions the Italian system of environmental law, throughout a rather long and thorny jurisprudential and doctrinal process in the last decades. 
The almost complete lack of any Constitutional reference to an environmental protection of any type in Italy explains the intricate route that led to acknowledgement of a public legal interest in the protection of the environment as a value in itself, disentangled from private interests. An important driving force in this direction has been provided by the guidelines of legal doctrine and jurisprudence. Environment gained protection emphasising the constitutionally protected interest to landscape protection, along with the right to health. A right to a healthy environment with constitutional rank was thereafter established, in order to recognize the autonomous protection of the unitary environmental heritage. The dual nature of environmental protection was acknowledged, highlighting its public dimension, as a widespread interest of fundamental value for the general community, and its private dimension, that could be protected in tort, compensating non-pecuniary or pecuniary interests adversely affected by environmental damage. 
After discussing the process of introduction of national standards on environmental damage conceived in the Italian Law n. 349/1986, the paper explores the current legislation on environmental liability as enshrined by Legislative Decree n. 152/2006, in agreement with the Directive 2004/35/EC.
Against the backdrop of this theoretical framework the paper introduces the case of a recent environmental disaster involving massive contamination of water intended for domestic supply by perfluoroalchilic substances (PFAS) in a large area of the Veneto Region, in Northern Italy. Attention is drawn to the characteristics which make these substances widely used globally in the productive sectors but at the same time dangerous for the public health, as well as the causes of their ten-year dispersion in the environment. The cause of contamination is attributable to a private chemical plant which, according to the investigations carried out by criminal prosecutors, appears to have knowingly concealed the contamination in the surroundings of the production site. Comparative atte3ntion is paid to the famous American case DuPont, which stands as a paradigm for this Italian environmental disaster. The similarities of the DuPont case with the Italian story allow on the one hand to exploit the knowledge acquired by the scientific community in that occasion concerning the effects of human exposure to the mentioned substances and, on the other hand, to evaluate to what extent a class action, which took place in the USA following the disaster, could be a collective procedural tool that could be used in the Italian case.
Due to a recent reform (law 31/2019) that will enter into force in November 2020, the Italian class action was made more effective and open to a wider array of cases than it was in its original version of 2006. The paper consequently analyses the availability of this �new� procedural tool to the case of PFAS pollution by all residents in contaminated areas who have suffered from personal or property damage as a result of consumption of contaminated water. Significant economic damage could be claimed by agri-food operators, who sustained considerable economic losses, having to provide non contaminated water for irrigation purposes and having to confront the fear of consumers, who reasonably refrained from purchasing food stuff produced in fields of the area interested by the alleged contamination. On the part of consumers, the costs of supplying water from alternative and safe sources, as well as the loss of value of buildings and land in the polluted area are considered as well in the general damage calculation. With regards to the non-pecuniary damages the feeling of insecurity about personal health conditions are also to be considered. This is not only related to the still prevailing uncertainty about the causal relationship between exposure to PFAS and onset of certain diseases, but also to the injury to the normal quality of life and the biological damage itself, in the event of occurrence of a PFAS-related disease.