Since 2009, cancer cases had been appearing in a residential area of Latsia, where the Astrasol factory operated, manufacturing shoe soles using dichloromethane.
In 2014, a World Health Organisation body demonstrated the toxicity of this substance. By then, the issues surrounding the factory’s operation and the cancer cases occurring next to it had become common knowledge.
This was followed in 2018 by an epidemiological study by Dr Constantinos C. Makris (Professor of Environmental Health at the Cyprus University of Technology) and Dr Michael Voniatis, which vindicated all those who had been raising the alarm about cancer.
It wasn’t until yesterday, in February 2025, that the State finally decided to remove the factory’s chemical waste from within the residential area. When facts speak so clearly, commentary becomes both unnecessary and redundant…
Φ.Μ.
