As you point out, it is not easy to prove a correlation between the health issues of people in Italy's Campania region and their exposure to toxic waste (see Nature 508, 431; 2014). The authorities seem to prefer to blame lifestyle factors, but that does not explain why thousands of non-smoking and sober sheep in the area have had to be removed from the food chain.

This waste crisis is a result of certified disposals as well as of illegal dumping, currently being investigated by the European Union project ENTITLE (www.politicalecology.eu); the crisis has been associated with environmental injustice and a disregard for democracy (see G. D'Alisa et al. Ecol. Econ. 70, 239–249; 2010). The area has become a political laboratory for testing extreme regulations. It is in a permanent state of emergency, with environmental and civil-rights laws suspended.

Rather than abusing emergency decrees in this way, a different type of laboratory is needed, in which social and natural scientists can accumulate the facts necessary to address the injustices embodied in the current patterns of contamination and exposure.