Dec. 20, 2016
After the release of an open letter by a group of Venetian doctors who are alarmed about the growing number of respiratory ailments they are treating due rising level of smog in the area, new measurements read levels of smog in Mestre that were double the allowable limits.
Responding to the report, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro seemed to rule out further action on the growing pollution problem. He said, “What we could do to reduce air pollution we… did it immediately, even in very difficult times. No option available to us has gone unevaluated, except that of blocking traffic on our roads, because that would be useless.”
The open letter from alarmed physicians called for the mayor, who is in charge of public health, to act, and to coordinate with other affected municipalities (which are many). “Indifference and fatalism are not effective treatments against fine particle pollution,” reads the letter.
Mayor Brugnaro’s comments seem to stand in contrast to the enthusiastic commitment to the environment he professed while a candidate. From his The Program booklet from the Mayoral campaign we read:
“Our administration will be very determined to guarantee the maximum quality of the natural environment and the landscape, one of the most important indicators of the quality of life.”
-Sources: La Nuova Venezia, -www.brugnarosindaco.it/il-programma
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