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The lush tropical forest and rust-red hills of Lote, located on India’s western shoreline, give way to a small hill where a factory looms against the sky.

This industrial unit is largely newly built, but its machinery is far from new: it originates from the defunct Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 after among the most severe environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after decades of producing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water sources in an region home to 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were found guilty at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and additional offenses and given prison sentences, which they are expected to appeal against.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

Nevertheless, all of the company’s equipment, its intellectual property and processes – everything needed to manufacture Pfas – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave thousands of miles distant, sandwiched among villages and wooded areas. And the plant has just started to produce forever chemicals again.

A Toxic Legacy

Previously recognized for its expertise in creating methods for specialty compounds, Miteni is now infamous for the harmful aftermath it left behind. In 2011, scientists found extraordinarily high levels of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of residents had been exposed through potable water.

The worst-affected were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, showed among the top levels of PFAS documented in human blood. “After the facts emerged, I looked at a catalog of health issues related to PFAS, and found out I had them all,” states Ermetti.

Elevated concentrations of PFAS in the bloodstream are linked to higher chances of cancer, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent surgical operation.

Community Concerns

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and activist with Mothers Against PFAS, started organizing after discovering her children’s blood showed high levels of forever chemicals. When she learned that Miteni’s patents and equipment were being sent to India, she was stunned.

“Being parents, as women, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Since our kids are the children of all.”

Business Shift

After Miteni went bankrupt, its assets were acquired in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the only bidder in the open sale. By early 2023, the complete machinery was being shipped en route to Mumbai. At the same time, Laxmi was boasting of its new acquisition to shareholders. Transcripts of investor gatherings indicate that Laxmi’s executives minimized environmental concerns, with its president, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “operating lawfully in compliance with EU regulations”.

Goenka is one of the three men on the directorate of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a entity founded in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the final CEO of Miteni, who was convicted of environmental pollution and financial misreporting at the June trial and given six years and four months in prison. According to a ex-supervisor requesting confidentiality, Nardone was traveling for work to India months before the firm’s collapse.

Although Laxmi purchased Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the plant in Lote shows that in March 2018 the company was already planning to commence manufacturing fluorinated compounds compatible with Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to requests for comment.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal to “capture [the] market share of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the production of PFAS and specialty chemicals. Logistics data show that, to secure validation on the quality of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing test batches to companies with previous commercial ties with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

Since early 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, manufacturing substances that will be utilized for agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, dyes, beauty products and other products.

Environmental Oversight

Studies have shown that levels of persistent pollutants in the ecosystem are alarmingly high, particularly around production sites. But even though global focus is increasing, in India the matter is not on the political agenda yet.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is absent in such guidelines. It’s not recognised by the national authorities as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in various regions. But this work are restricted in range, and there are still only a handful.”

Local Impact

Parineeta Dandekar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram manufacturing zone “has a dismal environmental track record”. After it was set up in 1986, “the livelihood of fisher folk communities in this area completely collapsed,” she said.

The industrial area is dependent on a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been at the forefront of complaints.

“Nearby communities have consistently reported that it’s malfunctioning,” said Dandekar. “During power outages, a common occurrence in rural Maharashtra state, the plant cannot function and industries discharge contaminated effluent directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have issued several warning letters to the site in recent years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is reviewing a proposal to prohibit the manufacture, import and use of more than 10,000 forever chemicals. This attention may be pushing the industry to the developing nations, per Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the University of Padua. “I think that this matter should be investigated, because the fact that Miteni’s operations, patents and machinery have been relocated to a nation like India should lead us to reflect, at the very least, on the influence that these global corporations have to move in nations where there is evidently a lowering of standards in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has closed down, but the company’s toxic legacy continues – at the polluted location in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts linked to PFAS manufacturing are expected to impact populations that are already struggling with an unsafe environment for generations.

“That region has experienced sufficient environmental destruction already,” says Dandekar. “If more dangerous companies move in, it’s always a risk.”