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The dense green jungle and reddish-brown hills of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, give way to a modest rise where a industrial facility stands against the sky.

The factory is almost brand new, but its equipment is far from new: it comes from the defunct Miteni factory in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 following one of the worst environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for contaminating water sources in an region home to 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were convicted at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and other charges and given prison sentences, which they are expected to appeal against.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

And yet, all of the company’s equipment, its intellectual property and processes – everything needed to manufacture forever chemicals – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, sandwiched among villages and groves of trees. And the factory has recently begun to resume PFAS production.

An Environmental Burden

Once known for its specialism in creating methods for specialty compounds, Miteni is now infamous for the toxic legacy it left behind. In 2011, scientists found exceptionally elevated levels of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants had been exposed through drinking water.

The worst-affected were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, displayed among the top levels of Pfas ever recorded in human blood. “When the story came to light, I looked at a list of medical conditions associated with Pfas, and found out I had them all,” says Ermetti.

Elevated concentrations of Pfas in the blood are associated with higher chances of cancer, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and additional ailments. Ermetti is presently recuperating from a recent medical procedure.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, began mobilizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests showed elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she learned that Miteni’s patents and machinery were being transferred to India, she was shocked.

“As mothers, as females, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Because our children are everyone’s children.”

Business Shift

After Miteni went bankrupt, its holdings were bought in 2019 by a pharmaceutical firm, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the only bidder in the public auction. By early 2023, the complete machinery was travelling on freight ships en route to Mumbai. At the same time, Laxmi was boasting of its recent purchase to shareholders. Records of investor gatherings indicate that Laxmi’s management downplayed environmental concerns, with its president, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “doing everything legally in compliance with EU regulations”.

Goenka is a member on the directorate of Laxmi Organic Italy, a entity established in 2021. Another is Antonio Nardone, the final CEO of Miteni, who was found guilty of ecological offenses and false accounting at the June trial and sentenced to six years and four months in prison. According to a ex-supervisor speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was traveling for work to India prior to the firm’s collapse.

Although Laxmi bought Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the factory in Lote reveals that in March 2018 the firm was already planning to start producing fluorinated compounds compatible with Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries declined to answer inquiries.

Growth Plans

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy clearly outlined the objective to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and become a leader in the manufacturing of PFAS and specialty chemicals. Shipping records indicate that, to secure validation on the standard of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out samples to firms with past business relationships with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s site in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, producing chemicals that will be utilized for pesticides, medicines, colorants, cosmetics and additional goods.

Regulatory Context

Investigations demonstrate that levels of forever chemicals in the ecosystem are alarmingly high, especially near manufacturing facilities. But even though international attention is growing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is absent in those standards. It’s unacknowledged by the national authorities currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the academic institution. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in different states. But these studies are limited in scope, and there are still very few of them.”

Regional Consequences

Parineeta Dandekar, head of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram manufacturing zone “has a poor ecological history”. After it was established in 1986, “the income source of fishing populations in this area totally deteriorated,” she said.

The chemical district is served by a shared effluent treatment facility that has been at the forefront of complaints.

“The local villages have always stated that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a common occurrence in rural Maharashtra state, the facility fails to operate and factories discharge contaminated effluent straight into the waterways.” Environmental authorities have issued multiple notices to the plant in recent years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is examining a proposal to ban the production, import and utilization of more than 10,000 forever chemicals. This attention may be pushing the sector to the global south, per Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the University of Padua. “I think that this issue should be investigated, because the fact that Miteni’s operations, patents and machinery have been transferred to a country like India should lead us to reflect, at the very least, on the influence that these multinationals have to move in nations where there is evidently a lowering of standards in terms of ecological safeguards.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has shut down, but the firm’s harmful impact lives on – at the polluted location in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts associated with PFAS manufacturing are expected to impact populations that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for years to come.

“The area has seen enough ecological damage already,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms move in, it’s perpetually concerning.”