The story of Fiorella Belpoggi, scientific director of the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, is that of a woman who has always been committed to research free from the pressures of industry and funded by citizens. In forty years of work you have revealed, with the help of your collaborators, the connections between the environment and health, between an unhealthy idea of progress and many of the diseases that afflict us. A work made possible thanks to the Ramazzini Institute (www.istitutoramazzini.it), a social Cooperative with 35,000 members, founded in 1987 by Professor Cesare Maltoni, a world-renowned oncologist, and by the then Senator of the Republic Luigi Orlandi, to contribute to the fight against cancer and environmental diseases. Her story and her battles in defense of health and the environment have also recently become a book, «Fiorella Belpoggi, history of a free scientist» (Terra Nuova Edizioni, euro 16.50) edited by the journalist Licia Granello.
Belpoggi, one of the strong points of her commitment as a researcher is the study of the damage that pesticides cause to man and the environment. What conclusion did she come to?
Talking about conclusions is risky. All toxicologists know that most pesticides are harmful to human health. The effects are different and more or less severe, but if a chemical compound is capable of eliminating bacteria, fungi, insects or weeds, it is certain that from a biological point of view it can also damage human cells. Our work on pesticides, which is in line with the European Union’s strategy on chemicals finalized in Brussels last October, has led to important and even disturbing results. For example on Mancozeb, a very widespread antifungal to combat powdery mildew in orchards, now agropharmaceutical finally banned also thanks to our study, and glyphosate, the most used herbicide in the world, as well as on the multiplicative effects of pesticide mixtures, even if administered at doses considered within safe limits for consumers. The first step in the fight to achieve sustainable agriculture is to decisively address the cumulative and combined effects of chemicals. The final goal, ambitious to the limit of utopia, is zero pollution, i.e. the achievement of one of the major goals of the European Green Deal. All of this is certainly very ambitious and will take a long time, but we have to start.
For this to happen what needs to be done?
At the Ramazzini Institute we have chosen to develop an experimental model compliant with international guidelines and at the same time focused on various investigative parameters, not only carcinogenesis, such as neurotoxicology, interference with endogenous hormones (endocrine disruptors), both sexual and metabolic, immunosuppression. The results of our studies may form the basis for the regulatory work of the European Commission, which in a recent report stated that “Human biomonitoring studies in Europe indicate an increasing number of different dangerous chemicals in the blood and tissues of the body human, including some pesticides and biocides. Additionally, combined prenatal exposure to several chemicals has led to reduced fetal growth and lower birth rates.’ And again: «It becomes necessary to speed up the work on methodologies to ensure the full implementation of the existing provisions». A certificate of seriousness that should take your breath away and which instead is still read too superficially by politicians and institutions.
Another important study of his is the one on 5G. What idea did she get?
I think there is no going back. By now the world of work and our social activities are all based on the new telematic technologies. So it is right that we proceed with technological innovation, but only with the certainty that there is no damage to health from continuous exposure to radiofrequency waves. This security does not exist, on the contrary. Recent laboratory animal studies, including ours, have shown that up to 50V/m an increased incidence of brain and peripheral nerve tumors can be observed. These are the same cancers reported in studies of the heavy user population with prolonged cell phone use. So this is a well-founded suspicion. In the world of synthetic chemistry, the one that is among us with millions of consumer products, there are countless examples of carcinogenic substances that have remained on the market even if they are dangerous, provided that in each product its specific quantity is below the permitted limits . So I ask myself: why not do the same thing with electromagnetic fields, why not limit the intensity of the field generated by antennas or mobile phones below those 50V/m which have proved to be dangerous? Europe instead proposes 61 V/m to meet the demands of companies that would spend much less installing a few powerful antennas rather than millions of small low power antennas. In Italy we have 6 V/m as a value of attention. Let’s cherish this limit and base our battles not on banning innovation, but on maintaining exposure levels compatible with our health.
This year the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is planning to review the carcinogenicity of aspartame. You’ve been dealing with it since 1997. How will it end?
In more than 50 years of activity we have never been wrong and, unfortunately, the confirmation of our results has always taken place by counting the sick or dead in the exposed population. I am sure that even for aspartame, present in about six thousand consumer products, the evaluation of the new results will lead to confirmation of its dangerousness.