🔗 Share this article

The dense tropical forest and rust-red elevations of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, lead to a modest rise where a factory looms under the open sky.

The factory is almost brand new, but its machinery is far from new: it originates from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 after among the most severe ecological controversies in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water resources in an region inhabited by 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were found guilty at the Vicenza court of causing environmental pollution and additional offenses and sentenced to jail, with appeals anticipated.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

And yet, all of the company’s equipment, its patents and methods – all required components to produce Pfas – is now located at Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave thousands of miles distant, wedged between villages and wooded areas. And the plant has recently begun to resume PFAS production.

An Environmental Burden

Once known for its expertise in creating methods for specialty compounds, Miteni is now notorious for the toxic legacy it left behind. In 2011, researchers found extraordinarily high levels of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Numerous of residents had been exposed through potable water.

The worst-affected were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who was employed for years in its specialty chemicals division, displayed one of the highest concentrations of Pfas documented in blood samples. “When the story came to light, I reviewed a catalog of health issues related to PFAS, and discovered I had them all,” states Ermetti.

High levels of Pfas in the bloodstream are linked to increased risk of malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, organ impairment, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent surgical operation.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and campaigner with Mothers Against PFAS, began mobilizing after discovering her children’s blood indicated high levels of persistent pollutants. When she found out that Miteni’s patents and machinery were being sent to India, she was shocked.

“As mothers, as women, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Because our children are everyone’s children.”

Business Shift

After Miteni went bankrupt, its holdings were acquired in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a subsidiary of the Indian chemical company Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant in the public auction. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was being shipped en route to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was promoting its new acquisition to shareholders. Records of shareholders’ meetings show that Laxmi’s executives minimized environmental concerns, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “operating lawfully in compliance with European standards”.

Goenka is one of the three men on the board of Laxmi Organic Italy, a entity established in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the final CEO of Miteni, who was convicted of environmental pollution and false accounting at the recent court case and given six years and four months in prison. Per a ex-supervisor speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was traveling for work to India months before the company went bankrupt.

While Laxmi bought Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the construction of the plant in Lote shows that in March 2018 the firm was already planning to commence manufacturing fluorochemicals matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to requests for comment.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the production of PFAS and fluorochemicals. Shipping records indicate that, to secure validation on the standard of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out samples to firms with past business relationships with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s site in Lote Parshuram has been fully operational, manufacturing substances that will be used in pesticides, medicines, dyes, beauty products and other products.

Environmental Oversight

Studies have shown that levels of forever chemicals in the environment are worryingly elevated, particularly around production sites. But even though global focus is increasing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is absent in those standards. It’s not recognised by the Indian government currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Autonomous study teams across India have conducted studies in various regions. But this work are limited in scope, and there are still very few of them.”

Regional Consequences

Parineeta Dandekar, head of the regional environmental group, says the Lote Parshuram manufacturing zone “has a poor ecological history”. After it was established in 1986, “the income source of fishing populations in this area completely collapsed,” she said.

The chemical district is served by a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been frequently criticized.

“The local villages have always stated that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a frequent event in the countryside, the plant fails to operate and factories release polluted water directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have issued several warning letters to the site in the past few years.

International Ramifications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is reviewing a proposal to ban the manufacture, importation and utilization of over ten thousand persistent compounds. This scrutiny may be driving the sector to the global south, per Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the University of Padua. “I think that this issue should be investigated, because the fact that Miteni’s operations, intellectual assets and equipment have been transferred to a nation like India should prompt consideration, at the very least, on the influence that these multinationals have to relocate in nations where there is evidently a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has closed down, but the company’s toxic legacy lives on – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects associated with Pfas production are likely to affect populations that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for years to come.

“That region has seen enough environmental destruction already,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms move in, it’s perpetually concerning.”