Find the mystery in 'Death Triangle' in Italy

The existence of more than 1,000 illegal landfills in an area in Italy may be the cause of abnormally high rates of aging and cancer deaths.

The area between the cities of Acerra, Nola and Marigliano in the Campania region in southern Italy is dubbed the "dead triangle" because the number of deaths from cancer here is higher than the average of the country. The phenomenon of malformed babies is also quite popular.

Scientists believe that deaths in the "dead triangle" relate to 1,230 illegal dumps in the area. They also suspect Camorra, the mafia organization in the Campania region, to protect those landfills.

A landfill in Campania, Italy.

To find out why the rate of malformed babies has skyrocketed, Carmine Nappi - a obstetrician of Federico II University, Italy - and her colleagues analyzed blood samples of healthy women who had been sick. Institute of abortion for abortion. They pay attention to telomeres - the DNA sequence at the end of the chromosome - in the blood cells of the female group, Newscientist said.

Telomeres are important for the biological aging process. Every time a cell divides, the length of the telomeres will decrease a bit. Finally, when short telomeres reach a certain level, the cell will die. Elizabeth Blackburn, a cell biologist with American and Australian citizens who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last year, likens telomeres to the ends of shoelaces. When the tip of the shoe breaks or splashes, the shoelaces start to fray.

If telomeres are too short, people will face many aging-related abnormalities - such as heart disease and dementia.

Campania (black) is on the side
south Italy. (Photo: campaniapizza.com)

The team found that blood telomeres 50 women live in the 'dead triangle' much shorter than the telomere of 50 women living in areas far from landfills. In addition, the shortest telomere belongs to the people who live near the most landfill.

'That shows that blood cells have suffered from the attack of oxidation. The women we studied were healthy, but their length of telomeres decreased, so their cell age was greater than their biological age , "Nappi said.

Thomas von Zglinicki, an aging researcher at Newcastle University in the UK, agrees that the aging rate of women living near the landfill is higher than normal.

'The shorter the person with telomeres is, the greater the risk of diseases related to old age. The greater the rate of aging, the higher the rate of malformations in newborns. So the risk of malformations in newborns is directly proportional to the age at which women give birth, ' Zglinicki explained.

Nappi has not identified the chemicals in the landfill that can increase the speed of aging of people, but they suspect they are dioxin - a group of toxic chemicals.

'We think dioxin can cause serious effects on fetal development,' Nappi said.