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The Documentary Podcast

Metaleurop : A stain on France

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For years the people of Evin-Malmaison in north-east France have lived and brought up children in a town which is dangerously polluted. The Metaleurop Foundry attracted workers and their families, it provided life to the area - but it has now killed it with the pollution, which lies deep in the soil. Twenty years after the factory closed, the scale of the scandal has only just emerged, thanks to a new residents campaign. But who will takes responsibility? Marine Hay meets the families here who say they can't live with lead seeping into their water supply, but can't leave because, who would buy their houses?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

In 2011, Fukushima nuclear power plant on the east coast of Japan was struck by a tsunami.

0:08.0

It triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster since Shinogawa.

0:12.0

We are in a nuclear emergency!

0:14.0

Fukushima, a new audio drama series from the BBC World Service,

0:19.0

tells the story of how the disaster unfolded and of those living with its aftermath.

0:24.0

The radiation is here, it's everywhere.

0:26.0

Search for Fukushima, where you get your BBC podcasts.

0:37.0

I'm heading to the north of France, 30 km from Lille, near the Belgian border to meet.

0:42.0

Cecille, her husband and their three kids in a town called Evan Malmaison.

0:48.0

Evan is only a small suburban city with about 4,600 people.

0:53.0

It's striking to me that when I travel in this part of France, how you know you are approaching your destination.

1:00.0

The building changes to Red Break and after maybe 90 minutes of driving, the spoilt tip,

1:05.0

inherited from the coal mining era emerges in the distance.

1:09.0

At the entrance of the town, I spot the highest frame, honoring its history.

1:15.0

I'm definitely not in a privileged region of France, and I am convinced that the story I'm going to tell you could only happen in such an environment.

1:25.0

What's happening at this moment to Cecille and more accurately to her two youngest sons is the poisonous inheritance of more than a century of industrial activities,

1:35.0

a dirt that still stains the soil here 20 years after the heavy industry closed down here.

1:43.0

This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Marinaï, a journalist in Paris, and I have come to Evan to find out more about one of France's worst environmental scandals.

1:59.0

Cecille, her husband, along with their eldest son Theo, came from the Valencian region, only 50 km from here.

2:07.0

They both land and moved in 2018. For two years, life was nice and easy. They had twin boys here in 2020.

2:15.0

But a TV documentary was shot in the School of Cecille's eldest boy. The levels of dangerous sleds in the soil then started to become scarierly clear.

2:25.0

Because our eldest child was going to daughter elementary school and it is a polluted zone, therefore we were scared that our child will have issues.

...

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