Franco Locatelli, president of the Higher Health Council, he said, «honored and grateful to be here. The extraordinary period we are experiencing from a biotechnological and pharmacological point of view in oncohematology, think of immunotherapy and Car-T, must not however make us forget the importance of prevention, which requires methodologically rigorous studies on the impact of pollution and of blood disorders. The pandemic has been a teacher: human health can only be guaranteed from a holistic perspective”.
“Environmental quality is essential to guarantee the right to health,” Health Minister Schillaci wrote in a note. The message from Environment Minister Pichetto Fratin, Deputy Minister Vannia Gava and Undersecretary for Health Marcello Gemmato was then read. Words of urgency in relation to the theme of the congress and of gratitude for the work of AIL, spent by the invited authorities but not present in the room. A silent room and very attentive to the reports of physicists, biologists, oncologists and other specialists, proving that there is a lot of concern.
Children are among the populations most vulnerable to pollutants. At contaminated sites, it logs an increased risk of «premature deaths, congenital defects and other pathologies, an increase in diagnoses but also in hospitalizations for all causes in children and young people. This excess risk can also be measured over the years and even after the implementation of environmental remediation”, said Ivano Iavarone of the Environment and Health Department of the Higher Institute of Health illustrating the data relating to children, adolescents and young people residing in contaminated sites. «Which are often in deprived areas also from a socio-economic point of view. In addition to the health issue, there is therefore that of equity, which would require protecting the most vulnerable, and environmental justice, therefore restoring the integrity of the environments”. We are talking about areas where illegality plays a decisive role when we look at the presence of illegal dumps, reclamation activities and the management of contracts, as illustrated by Nino Tarantino, sub-commissioner for the implementation of the interventions necessary for adapting to current legislation on illegal landfills present on the national territory.
Comparing today’s air quality with the past is only possible where there is the availability of homogeneous data but for many substances this monitoring does not go back more than ten years, he explained Giorgio Cattani, head of the air quality monitoring section of the Ispra Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research. It is “an important information gap” for those seeking to determine cause-and-effect relationships between exposures and illnesses and for those seeking to reduce pollutants. Just think that “the particulate matter is not only emitted directly from the various polluting sources, but is formed from the so-called precursors in the atmosphere and we have a different ability to act on these different sources”.
Among the hot topics of the day, also electromagnetic fields, in which we are increasingly immersed inside and outside the home. “The current limits, established by international health agencies such as the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection ICNIRP and the World Health Organization WHO, are very high and this has consequences on people’s health,” said Massimo Scalia. physicist of the Cirps research center for sustainable development of the Sapienza University of Rome. To study the effects of electromagnetic waves on biological tissues, “a rigorous characterization of the electromagnetic environment is needed, which have so far been studied in laboratories in controlled environments”.
Then there is the whole chapter related to occupational exposure, complicated by the fact that cancer is a multifactorial disease and that, just as oncohaematological diseases are on the rise, so are the physical and chemical agents in the environment capable of triggering them. There are many questions on the table: will it ever be possible to achieve zero or risk-free pollution? Will a balance ever be found between the right to health and the inevitable occupational exposure to pollutants?