Risk assessment and management: an integrated approach linking human and enviroment monitoring in industrial areas.

The tool to be developed meets the current needs in Italy, and is expected to be further improved in the coming years, within the industrial areas already involved as well as in other areas that have to be planned - According to the National Annual Priorities for Italy 2013, (Parma Declaration on Environment and Health"). The RASIA- Project will create a risk assessment and management procedure for a selected area of Sicily declared Area at High Risk of Environmental Crisis. The sites includes private industrial areas, public and marine areas of Gela, Niscemi and Butera (Caltanissetta). These areas have elevated levels of heavy metals generated by a range of sources, and the project will assess the health and environmental risks deriving from these sources. Assessments would impact on land-use planning and allow remedial action to be taken where necessary. The acquired expertise can be applied in other regions of Italy and, with some modifications, elsewhere in the EU. The project is based on the assumption that the distribution of information is the best way to manage the impact on public health of environmental risk, due to the further fusion of ancillary health-related information (i.e. georeferenced population density, exposure data) and dose-response functions. In order to allow the estimation of health risk associated to the heavy metals exposure from airborne chemicals in fine and ultra-fine particle form, all relevant information gathered, and for example, assessment of heavy metals in environmental matrices and bio monitoring (human exposure) will be carried out to obtain better understanding on the exposure-response relationships in the industrial areas. The innovation value of the project mainly involve the implementation, in an integrated way, of two environmental policy instruments: Human biomonitoring (HBM), and Environmental Monitoring (EM).