Toxic garbage in Naples Italy worries tourists and residents

Hazardous Waste Enrages Residents of Naples and Worries Tourists
Travelers touring Italy might start giving Naples in the Campania region of Italy a wider berth as garbage - and damning health reports - continue to pile up.

Research released last year by Italy's National Research Council found that people living closest to the waste disposal sites with the least regulation - where trash is dumped in fields or burnt without any controls - had a mortality rate that was 12 per cent greater than normal for women and 9 per cent greater for men.

Fatal liver cancers were much more common - up 29 per cent for women and 19 per cent for men in the most at-risk areas - and there were huge increases in congenital malformations of the nervous and urinary systems.

This part of the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital, has been dubbed "the triangle of death" and daily receives hazardous industrial waste from the north of Italy.

Residents in Naples have been taking to the streets in protest, convinced their health has suffered, and in some cases family members haved died, as a result of the toxic pollution.

Health-conscious travelers may want to reconsider renting a villa and foregoing extended stays in the Naples area, and instead leave it for a day visit.