Industry near the home

What we use

The European register of industrial plants from the European Environment Agency, which collects what plants are required to report under the Industrial Emissions Directive and the pollutant release register (E-PRTR). In Italy there are 7,702 plants. Licence CC BY 4.0.

How we use it

The report says how many large plants are within one kilometre and within three kilometres of the address, their names, what they do and how far away they are. Activities are written in plain words: "cement, glass or ceramics", "iron and steel works", "intensive livestock farming", "landfill", "wastewater treatment".

The block does not pass judgement, and that is deliberate: the source says that a plant is there and what it declares, not how much it bothers anyone. A yard for inert materials and a refinery sit in the same list. We print the name, the activity and the distance; the reader decides, and the reader also knows which way the wind blows.

Limits, and they matter

• Only the large ones are in it. These are plants above the European thresholds: power stations, refineries, steelworks, cement works, chemicals, paper mills, landfill sites, incinerators, wastewater plants and intensive livestock farms. The workshop, the body shop and the small warehouse stay outside it, so "no plants within one kilometre" speaks about the large ones.
• The position is declared by the operator and it is a single point: for a large site the boundary can be much closer than the point shown.
• Some positions are wrong, and we drop them. About one plant in ten turns out to be in a municipality other than the one it declares, and on some fallback points several different companies pile up. The report only uses plants whose position is confirmed: in Italy 6,871 out of 7,702. A few real plants right on a municipal boundary are lost, and that is the right way round to be wrong.
• We say that the plant is there, what it does and how far away it is. How much it pollutes and how loud it is are measured by the regional environmental agency (ARPA). Reported pollutants only appear above very high thresholds: a plant with no pollutants listed is a plant that stayed below them.

Official page: European Industrial Emissions Portal.