The López Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science (joint centre of CSIC and the University of Valencia), based at the Palau de Cerveró, and the University of Valencia’s Cinema Club present the film season “Toxic Environments”. The season will start next Thursday 16 January, with the film Síndrome laboral (Sigfrid Monleón, 2005). The next film, screened on Thursday 23, will be Cenizas del cielo (José Antonio Quirós, 2008). A round-table discussion called Medi Ambient i salut infantil: el projecte INMA (The Environment and Child Health: INMA project) will be held exceptionally, as part of the season, on Tuesday 28 January. The film A Civil Action (Steven Zaillian, 1998) will close the season on Thursday 30 January.

The films will be screened on the aforementioned Thursdays at 18:00 in the conference room at Palau de Cerveró, in original version with Spanish subtitles. Each film will be introduced by a member of the Cinema Club and an expert on the subject. An open discussion will take place after the screenings. The season has been coordinated by Ximo Guillem, trainee lecturer and doctor in Biology (University of Valencia), and Ferran Ballester, Sabrina Llop and María José López Espinosa, lecturers at the Fundación para el Fomento de la Investigación Sanitaria y Biomédica (Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research, FISABIO, CIBERESP. University of Valencia).

The films included in this season address the conflict between public health and the unhealthy environments of our industrialised societies. They analyse the extreme harmfulness of certain work environments, the impact of water pollution on human health and the impact of power plants on the environment, especially through acid rain. These three environmental health issues will be addressed from recent cases, but we will cover their history and talk about increasingly visible and intense future debates. The regulation of these environments (or the lack of thereof) has depended on diverse social actors. The three films pose excellent cases to revive these controversial issues and debates.

The first film is Síndrome Laboral. From 1989 until its ban by the Generalitat Valenciana in the autumn of 1992, there was a sector called textile spray painting, in which workers from small businesses painted with pneumatic guns. The working conditions in these industries were clearly insufficient. Moreover, the products were mixed and used without paying attention to their danger, and the released gases affected the lungs badly.

The second film, to be screened on Thursday 23 January, is Cenizas del cielo. Ferguson, a Scottish adventurer and writer of guidebooks, visits northern Spain to finish writing his latest book. Forced to stay there, he becomes friends with Federico, a farmer who believes that the power plant that pollutes the valley will be closed thanks to the Kyoto protocol. Federico will show Ferguson the unique lives of the characters living in that threatened microcosm: Cristina, a woman with two children; a couple who believes that they can’t have children because of the power plants; a miner who took early retirement and is obsessed with gold; and a fisherman who fishes everything except fishes. Little by little, Ferguson will get involved in Federico’s struggle against the power plant.

A special session will take place on Tuesday 28 January at 18:00. It will consist of a round-table discussion called Medi Ambient i salut infantil: el projecte INMA, which will be coordinated by researchers Ferran Ballester, Sabrina Llop and María José López Espinosa (FISABIO, CIBERESP, University of Valencia).

The last film of the season, which will be screened on Thursday 30 January, is A Civil Action. Eight families from Wobum (Massachusetts, United States) undertake legal action against two powerful corporations, whom they accuse of having polluted the town’s water with chemical residues that have resulted in their children’s death due to deadly cases of leukemia. Jan Schlichtmann, an attorney specializing in personal injury law and toxic torts, will be in charge of the case.