Ecomafia Dumping on Italy. Organized crime’s interest in trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials is gaining rapidly on its involvement in the illegal arms and drug trade. An Italian environmental agency warns that Italy is sitting on a “radioactive waste bomb”; around 5,000 tons of radioactive metal waste originating in Eastern Europe finds its way into the country annually, most of it passed off as innocuous scrap metal. In 1998, the accidental smelting of radioactive metal scrap by a Spanish foundry spread a plume of cesium-137 across five European countries.
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