The killer fertilser factory, Fábrica Adubos de Portugal, fired up again last week after a month long stoppage due to the legionella outbreak traced to its plant.
The factory owners received a notification on 26th December from the General Inspectorate of the ministry of Agriculture that it could resume full prodcution.
This was the same Inspectorate that had shut down the factory as one of its cooling towers had proved to have been the source of the legionella bacteria.
The towers now have been cleaned out, re-inspected and given a clean bill of health.
In the December 15th final report on the legionella outbreak, the worst in Portugal’s history, the factory in Vila Franca de Xira was blamed for 12 deaths and the ilness of 375 individuals.
A few days after the outbreak, the Minister of the Environment, Jorge Moreira da Silva, authorised an emergency inspection of the fertiliser plant with a view to prosecution of the factory’s owners should there have been any environmental crime committed.
On November 12th the fertilizer company said that it knew the law and had rigorously followed inspection procedures.
On November 21st, at the end of the final meeting of the working group set up by the Ministry of Health to monitor the outbreak, the Director General of Health revealed that bacteria found in those patients suffering from legionnaires’disease were a match with the legionella bacteria detected in the cooling towers.
The inspectorate needs now to decide whether there is a criminal case to answer. If this matter is dropped by the government, private prosecutions inevitably will follow.
