Environmental issues due to organohalogenated compounds diffuse pollution in groundwater. Emerging issue in the Roman area?

Abstract

Most of the large urban areas, especially those with a strong industrial vocation, present important contamination of organohlaogenated compunds. Even in the City of Rome, although it has a very limited industrial development, some sites interested by this kind of contamination have been notified in recent years. The distribution of these sites is prevalent in the eastern sector of the city where the few industrial activities present are also located. Concentrations are varied and show both cases of clear point source contamination, where values are very high, and cases where a possible contamination from multiple point sources can be hypothesized. The sites reported fall into a crucial area for the hydrogeology of Rome, that is the "Paleotiber Graben" aquifer, exploited for various uses. To date, there is no proven diffuse contamination of organohalogenated compounds in Rome, nevertheless the purpose of this work is to frame this emerging issue on the basis of the available data