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The lush tropical forest and reddish-brown hills of Lote, located on India’s west coast, give way to a small hill where a factory looms against the sky.

The factory is almost brand new, but its machinery is far from new: it originates from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 following one of the worst environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water resources in an area inhabited by 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were convicted at the local tribunal of causing environmental pollution and additional offenses and sentenced to jail, which they are expected to appeal against.

What are PFAS, how toxic are they and how do you become exposed?

Nevertheless, all of the company’s equipment, its patents and processes – everything needed to manufacture forever chemicals – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, sandwiched among villages and wooded areas. And the factory has just started to resume PFAS production.

A Toxic Legacy

Previously recognized for its specialism in developing processes for specialty compounds, Miteni is now notorious for the harmful aftermath it left behind. In 2011, researchers found extraordinarily high levels of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of residents had been subjected through drinking water.

The most impacted were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who was employed for years in its fluorinated chemical department, displayed one of the highest concentrations of PFAS ever recorded in human blood. “When the story came to light, I looked at a catalog of health issues associated with Pfas, and found out I had them all,” states Ermetti.

High levels of PFAS in the blood are linked to higher chances of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent medical procedure.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and campaigner with Mothers Against PFAS, began mobilizing after learning her children’s blood indicated elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she found out that Miteni’s proprietary information and equipment were being transferred to India, she was stunned.

“As mothers, as females, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Since our kids are everyone’s children.”

Corporate Transition

After Miteni went bankrupt, its assets were acquired in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a subsidiary of the Indian chemical company Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant in the open sale. By the start of 2023, all the equipment was travelling on freight ships heading to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was promoting its new acquisition to investors. Records of investor gatherings show that Laxmi’s executives downplayed ecological worries, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “operating lawfully according to 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 ecological offenses and false accounting at the recent court case and sentenced to six years and four months in jail. Per a ex-supervisor speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was taking business trips to India months before the firm’s collapse.

Although Laxmi purchased Miteni’s properties in June 2019, the ecological review for the construction of the factory in Lote shows that in March 2018 the firm was already intending to start producing fluorinated compounds compatible with Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and become a leader in the manufacturing of PFAS and specialty chemicals. Logistics data show that, to get approval on the quality of the chemicals, 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 fully operational, manufacturing substances that will be utilized for agrochemicals, medicines, dyes, cosmetics and additional goods.

Regulatory Context

Investigations have shown that levels of forever chemicals in the ecosystem are worryingly elevated, particularly around production sites. But although global focus is growing, in India the matter is not on the political agenda yet.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is not present in those standards. It’s not recognised by the Indian government as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Autonomous study teams across India have performed research in various regions. But these studies are restricted in range, and there are still very few of them.”

Local Impact

Parineeta Dandekar, head of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a poor ecological history”. After it was set up in 1986, “the income source of fisher folk communities in this area totally deteriorated,” she said.

The industrial area is dependent on a shared effluent treatment facility that has been frequently criticized.

“The local villages have consistently reported that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a frequent event in rural Maharashtra state, the facility fails to operate and factories discharge polluted water straight into the waterways.” Regulatory bodies have sent multiple notices to the site in the past few years.

International Ramifications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is reviewing a proposal to ban the production, importation and use of over ten thousand persistent compounds. This scrutiny may be pushing the sector to the developing nations, per Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the University of Padua. “I think that this issue should be examined, because the fact that Miteni’s operations, patents and machinery have been relocated to a nation like India should lead us to reflect, minimally, on the power that these multinationals have to relocate in countries where there is clearly a lowering of standards in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has shut down, but the company’s toxic legacy lives on – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects associated with Pfas production are likely to affect communities that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for generations.

“That region has seen enough environmental destruction already,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms move in, it’s always a risk.”