Two jailed mafia informants had identified the field as one of the secret sites where the Camorra had buried toxic waste, near a region north of Naples known as the Triangle of Death because of the emergence of clusters of cancer cases...
..Garbage is a perennial problem in Italy as landfills run out of space, setting off periodic crises in cities like Rome and Naples. But the land of the Camorra, stretching from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Apennine foothills, is a particularly vivid tableau of ruined beauty.

Garbage is strewn along highways, tossed beneath overpasses or dumped atop irrigation canals. Rats search for food amid discarded sheets of asbestos, broken computer screens and empty paint cans. Plumes of black smoke often rise, the entrails of trash illegally burned from distant hillsides or abandoned fields.

The landscape is a result of decades of secret dealings between manufacturers in Italy and beyond, who sought to avoid the high costs of legally disposing of hazardous waste, and the Camorra, one of Italy’s three main mafia organizations, which saw the potential to make huge profits by disposing of it illegally...