Above all, the Bel Paese once again plays the role of a harlequin: there are few happy islands. And the result of the environmental instability weighs on the health of Italians and, what is worse, its impact on it is not quantifiable because useful detection systems (control units for example) of environmental phenomena are lacking or completely missing, as well as systems for monitoring and managing risks to human health. This is the photograph taken from the first edition of the Osservasalute Ambiente Report (2008), an in-depth analysis of the state of health of the environment and its effects on the health of the Italian population carried out by the National Observatory on Health in the Italian Regions and coordinated by Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Institute of Hygiene of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Catholic University of Rome and presented this morning at the "Agostino Gemelli" University Hospital.
A gloomy picture emerges from the Report with Regions virtuous for some aspects of environmental protection, but still lagging behind on others, and Regions, especially those of the South, which instead present a truly gloomy overall picture.
And further damage could come from federalism because pollution has no borders: if there is a lack of coordination between Regions, the effects of shrewd policies adopted in some local realities could be nullified when in others, neighboring ones, polluting continues in a short-sighted way.
"The differences in performance between Regions in dealing with environmental risk are evident, even more so if one considers how limiting it is, by virtue of the global influence of pollution situations, to consider the environmental problem according to the geographical, economic and social limits of the Regions themselves - explained Ricciardi -. In this, the phenomenon of regionalization of decision-making processes, also in the environmental field, could increase rather than decrease the existing gaps in the coordination of preventive actions necessary for solving problems in an integrated system".
"In most cases - added Umberto Moscato, of the Institute of Hygiene of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome and author of the Report - the environment is monitored only for regulatory needs or obligations and this monitoring is disconnected from a real knowledge of the health/illness phenomenon in the population, seen in an integrated, structured, formalized and shared way. These problems are amplified and worsened if seen from the point of view of the gap between Regions (virtuous and less virtuous), considering that pollution is a global phenomenon”. Basically, although a citizen of Pavia could "gloat" as the province declares that the environmental parameters are fine, in reality industrial fumes coming from Campania (where controls are less rigorous or absent), could at any moment cause negative effects on the health of Pavia citizens
In short, pollution has no borders.
Air quality measurement stations. The number of stations used in the EoI area had an increase in Italy of around 23% in 2006 compared to 2005, defining a trend, albeit slow, which is constantly increasing: 332 stations in 2003, 359 in 2004, 432 in 2005, 533 in 2006. The increase mainly regarded the monitoring stations.
