Abstract

The Spinetta Marengo chemical plant, located in the city of Alessandria, Piedmont, is one of the most important industrial facilities still operating in northern Italy. Now almost 120 years old, it is the only perfluorinated compounds (PFAS) factory in Italy and one of Europe's "hotspots", i.e. places where contamination is particularly concentrated and dangerous. Analyzing the social and political effects of pollution, we observe an entrenched weariness surrounding industrial harm, with a very low degree of collective activism. We propose that being hardened to industrial damage is in part the outcome of years of slow environmental violence, which has normalized long-term exposure to toxic substances through repression, negotiations and compromises, inside and outside the factory. Social history reveals the workers' recollections about illness and risk acceptance, repression and occupational blackmail, but also conflict around environmental and health justice. Drawing on political ecology, the concepts of environmental & 'slow' violence, and green criminology, we integrate archival interviews, press reports, and fieldwork. Conflicts in the 1960s and 1970s escalated demands for the right to health, leveraging democratic medicine and "white strikes" to close polluting departments and secure compensation. However, activism then declined, and slow violence manifested in asymmetrical knowledge/power, temporal deferral of corporate responsibilities, the curation of memory, and ecological grief for lost industrial landscapes. Amid occupational blackmail and the residues of modernity, counter-narratives could still break the silence, and valorize the suffering of toxified communities.

Keywords: Slow violence, Spinetta Marengo, toxics, environmental justice, right to health

How to Cite:

Martone, V. & Castellani, A., (2025) “Social history of industry, between environmental violence and working-class ecology. A case study on the chemical plant in Spinetta Marengo, Italy”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 6432. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6432