Soil chemistry and human health as an integrated framework in the urban environment

The aim of an environmental and health sustainable management, decision-makers, particularly territorial planning authorities, need the appropriate information and tools to evaluate the best decisions to take, connected to the investigated problems. The study was carried out in the urban area of Pisa (Italy) assessing the environmental and health risk related to the incinerator located at Ospedaletto in the near suburbs of the city. The project included three main research branches: Public Health (i.e. state of health of the population living within 4 km radius circle around the incinerator, based on the health information system and an ad-hoc survey on respiratory symptoms and risk perception); Environment (i.e. investigation on the main pollutants: heavy metals dioxins in soils potentially produced by an incinerator, the soils have also been characterized for all the main physical and chemical properties); Georeferecing (i.e. all the environmental and health data collected have been transferred in thematic maps using GPS and GIS resources). The study carried out revealed the potential of a multidisciplinary team in this kind of investigations and allowed to elaborate a procedure aimed to the correct management of the public health. Some high concentration values detected for selected contaminants are interesting if the potentially toxic effects on community health, plants growth and quality of waters are considered. To integrate environmental and health knowledge a survey on the population health conditions before the possible contamination is necessary, since these information will be relevant in order to set up a monitoring system on the potential impacts.