This was another BIG industrial accident that happened in the 70's, when 3000 kg of chemicals were release in the air in Seveso, North of Milan.
One of the chemicals released was dioxine, and the effects were'nt pretty. I remeber seeing some pictures of the people contamined an they didn't look pretty. One thing that shocked me was that they washed everything in the area with water hoses. I mean it was something like Chernobyl, only on a smaller scale.
People don't remeber about this very much today, since we had worse since, like Chernobyl and Bhopal, but these things happened.
If you look it up on the net, you'll see that there were no casualties at the moment, but that doesn't mean it was something to ignore. Studies revealed that the sex ratio of the children was 62 boys to 100 girls, compared to the normal ratio of 106 boys to 100 girls, in the families where the father was exposed to dioxine during the accident. If you don't think that's scary, think about the effects not observed yet.
And one more thing: after I created this node, I've heard the word "Seveso" again on TV. It was after the Toulouse accident. The EC has a directive called "Seveso", dealing with high-risk industrial sites. Apparently, they were scared enough to remeber what happened.