|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
|
a Department of Environment and Primary Prevention, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, 00161 Rome, Italy b Unit of Epidemiology, CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology, 56127 Pisa, Italy c Campania Region Health Authority—Regional Epidemiological Observatory, 80100 Naples, Italy d Campania Region Environmental Protection Agency, 80100 Naples, Italy e WHO European Centre for Environment and Health, Rome Office, 00187 Rome, Italy
Key Words: toxic wastes • dumping sites • cancer • malformations
Address for correspondence: Pietro Comba, Department of Environment and Primary Prevention, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Roma, Italy. Voice: 39-06-49902249; fax: 39-06-49387083. e-mail: comba{at}iss.it
Several recent studies have documented that a widespread practice of dumping toxic wastes has taken place for many years in the Provinces of Naples and Caserta. Extensive programs of environmental monitoring are currently ongoing in the area. In this frame, the Department of Civil Defence of the Italian Government has appointed an ad hoc study group in order to assess the health status of the population resident in the area of interest. The first investigation performed by the study group has been a geographic study on cancer mortality and occurrence of malformations in 196 municipalities constituting the two Provinces. The study detected an area located in the southeastern part of the Province of Caserta and in the northwestern part of the Province of Naples, where cancer mortality and congenital malformations show significantly increased rates with respect to expected figures derived from the regional population. The area highlighted by the study is, in general terms, overlapping with the area where most illegal dumping of toxic wastes took place. It is now recommended that mortality studies be extended to take into account other health outcomes, to search for correlations with environmental exposures, and consider possible confounding factors.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
