The people of Celje have been behaving for decades like everything is completely normal and are happy to eat the fruit and vegetables they grow in their gardens, the paper says under the headline ‘Does Anybody Care Anymore?’.
Those warning against eating cadmium-loaded foods are few and far between. "Everybody else (including some schools and institutions) acts like they live in a prairie."
But the soil that needs to be removed from kindergarten playgrounds becomes dangerous waste the moment it is removed. And if it gets dumped in a lake, for example, the careless culprits get a fine similar to the fine you would get walking your dog through a cemetery in Maribor.
The paper says that the ministry in charge of the environment has helped to preserve this attitude of carelessness. It seems that the only one trying to find connections between the environment and people's health is Cinkarna Celje, whose predecessor caused much of the pollution.
The company is doing this in order to wash itself clean of guilt and is classifying all potential problems as the legacy of the old zinc melting factory.
Although the company has conducted several studies of its own volition, this does not mean that Cinkarna will launch a massive clean-up. "Why would it if the locals don't care about cadmium pollution."
