Weekend fire at warehouse dismays Cancer Society

Last weekend’s fire at a plastics warehouse in the northern Athens suburb of Metamorfosi was particularly serious for public health, according to the Hellenic Cancer Society, which stressed that such facilities must operate outside densely populated areas, with strict safety standards.

“The problem is that the fire created a toxic cloud that contained large amounts of dioxins, chemicals that are extremely carcinogenic to the human body, and substances that float in the air and settle on surfaces,” said the president of the Hellenic Cancer Society Vangelis Philopoulos.

He insisted that such warehouses for tires, plastics etc, or factories that produce them, should not operate near densely populated areas, but rather in places where the smoke can be directed to uninhabited areas or where the evacuation of the population is easy and possible.

They also should not be close to arable land, he said.