The Teulada polygon is, or has been, "a heavily contaminated area with a high health risk, as evidenced by the occurrence of numerous cases - well beyond the statistical average in relation to age - of tumor pathologies".
The judges of the Sardinian TAR have no doubts, called to express themselves on the case (yet another) of a Sardinian Army corporal who at 28 fell ill with leukemia after serving "for years, without any kind of protection" in the military area of the southwest of the island.
He sued, to at least receive compensation. But the doctors of the Ministry of Defense had denied the connection between the disease, an "acute myeloid leukemia and myeloid sarcoma" localized at level D6 ", and the activities carried out in the range. And they generically attributed the pathology "to advancing age and a possible genetic predisposition".
The soldier had won a first appeal and the TAR had ordered the medical commission to carry out further investigations. The verdict? Arrived in 2021, the same as the previous one and many others issued in similar cases: the polygon, is the thesis of doctors with stars, has nothing to do with it. Soldiers get sick because they get sick, in short. Except that the documents and reports do not go into depth on why the link should be excluded. And for the administrative judges it is not the victim soldier who has to prove its existence, but the Defense has to provide proof of the "innocence" of the shooting range and the activities that have been carried out within it over the years.
So here is the new sentence: the medical commission must meet again to decide on the case, but must respect the dictates contained in the device, just filed on the basis of the new appeal presented by the lawyers Caterina Usala and Antonio Carta on behalf of the sick soldier.
According to the judges, "there was insufficient consideration by the audit committee of the young age of the applicant, born in 1984, hired in perfect health in 2007, admitted to a four-year contract (after passing a new medical examination) in 2009, hospitalized for the onset of the disease at the Civil Hospital of Verona on April 10, 2012, as well as the fact that none of his family members have ever been affected by such a disease ".
Furthermore "in the period of performance of the service, despite operating in an area characterized by a very high risk factor connected to contact with an environment contaminated by the use of depleted uranium ammunition and in general by heavy war pollution", the corporal, employed as a mortician, “He did not have any protective devices for radiological risk, nor had he attended specific courses or had adequate information on the specific risk from exposure due to training activities involving harmful material”.
The college adds that " the conclusions of the verification committee and the intimated ministry , in the sense of excluding any profile of aetiological link between the pathology in question and the activity to which the soldier was exposed, appear incongruent and inadequately in-depth ".
Then the quote from a report signed by Professor Licinio Contu, who wrote: "Military exercises such as those that took place in Quirra and Capo Teulada have certainly caused an intense production of metal nanoparticles and a practically permanent contamination of the areas subject to military exercises and surrounding areas (…). There is no doubt that this bombing activity also carried out on metal targets (tanks or other) , due to its intensity, the type of bombs used and their concentration over time, over a limited area, must have reached and exceeded deflagration temperatures on targets of 3000 ° C , which is the condition that leads to the formation of metal nanoparticles. But that this happened is not just a hypothesis, we have direct evidence of it ”.
