Prosecutor orders probe into fire at recycling plant

An Athens prosecutor on Tuesday ordered an emergency probe into the causes of a fire at a recycling plant in Aspropyrgos, southwest of Athens, which covered the Greek capital and the port city of Piraeus in noxious fumes from melting plastic and other packaging material for the fourth day on Tuesday.

The prosecutor wants to ascertain whether the blaze that started on Saturday at the plant, which has been closed for several months, was caused by accident or was the result of arson or some other criminal act.

"The fire department managed to enter the area just yesterday," the fire chief for Western Attica, Yiannis Vasileiou, told Kathimerini. "Today we have started trying to put out the blaze by building small mounds of the material. However, whenever we start shifting the debris it causes new blazes to break out, which his why the smell is so intense."

Responding to concerns about the possible dangers to the public's health from the fumes, Anastasis Christidis, head of the environment department of the Municipality of Elefsina, was reassuring, saying that the direction of the wind has been sending most of the pollution out to sea.

"Measuring the exact levels of dioxins and polyaromatic hydrocarbons would require a different sampling and analysis procedure, which municipalities are not equipped to carry out," said Christidis.

Meanwhile, pollution-measuring stations in the area could not give an assessment of the content of the smog as they are tasked only with measuring CO2 levels in the atmosphere and other forms of urban pollution.

According to sources, the Attica Regional Authority is putting together a team of experts to carry out the necessary studies and assess whether the fire constitutes a public health hazard.