The much-famous "Spiagge Bianche" (White Beaches) to the north and south of the river Fine between the towns of Rosignano Solvay and Vada (province of Livorno) are well known and frequented by Italian and foreign tourists for a characteristic that makes them similar to other famous beaches in Italy such as the one. of Stintino in Sardinia or even to the beaches of the Maldives or the Caribbean: a fine, almost blinding white sand and a crystalline sea of an iridescent color from emerald green to cobalt blue.
The fact is that all this is not the work of Mother Nature, but of man: it is the consequence of the discharges into the sea of the nearby Solvay industrial plant, which would contain poisons of all kinds, from arsenic, to mercury, to ammonia. , cadmium ...
In 1999, UNEP (the United Nations environmental control program) classified this area as one of the most polluted in Italy. Solvay, on the other hand, denies any wrongdoing, arguing that the situation has greatly improved in recent years and that bathing is completely safe. ARPAT (Tuscany Regional Agency for Environmental Protection), comparing the data provided by Solvay itself with those detected by ARPAT and ministerial controls, has indeed noticed some discrepancies, but has substantially confirmed that safety limits have not been exceeded.