Climate change effects on POPs' environmental behaviour: a scientific perspective for future regulatory actions

Abstract Since the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, international efforts were aimed at limiting global change, and at managing and reducing its inevitable impacts. The growing concern on climate change related issues lead to create international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, and to establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change aimed at studying climate evolution and at defining common actions through the adoption of joint climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. From the time when international Task Forces, projects and programs were shared in order to deal with the reduction of environmental exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), international organisations have also been committed to estimate how climate change may affect POPs' environmental behaviour and distribution. In this review paper, we report the track of POPs' regulation efforts driven towards decreasing POPs' environmental concentrations through reducing or banning POP emissions in the environment. We also report scientific studies on climate change related effects on POPs' environmental behaviour in order to feature how climate change is influencing POPs' fate and transport. Our final aim is to identify how POPs–related regulations may take into account climate change in managing current or future POPs sources. We find in several case studies on this topic that climate change is considered to contribute to enhance POPs' long–range transport and that remote areas are considered likely to be the most impacted by POPs' pollution under a climate change perspective. Our findings also consider that continuous monitoring programs oriented towards the observation of secondary POP sources and the enhancement of inventories reporting primary and secondary POP emissions are useful in dealing with POPs' exposure under climate change scenarios. We also suggest how communication between science and regulation should be driven towards considering climate change effects into chemicals' legislation

Involve to improve: A participatory approach for a Decision Support System for coastal climate change impacts assessment. The North Adriatic case

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A system for the evaluation of environmental risk for lagoon arachaeological sites

The project Archeorisk is presented. The objective is to develop a Decision Support System (DSS) for the safeguard and the management of the underwater archaeological patrimony in the Lagoon of Venice. The DSS has been completed in the form of a software prototype working as an extension of a geographic informative system. The DSS allows to evaluate the entity, the type and the distribution of the decay risk to which the lagoon archaeological sites are subjected. Its development has requested the acquisition of experimental data on the decay of the findings and about the main causes. In particular, the decay of ceramic and wooden objects has been studied. The system, that can be adapted to different environmental and archaeological contexts, is destined to the Archaeological Superintendence and permits to integrate the safeguard of the cultural heritage with that of the natural environment

Úlcera bilateral por Acanthamoeba em usuária de lentes de contato gelatinosas descartáveis: um incidente trágico ou uma conseqüência da política agressiva de venda de lentes de contato gelatinosas?

This is the report of a case of bilateral Acanthamoeba keratitis in a 19-year-old woman who bought a pair of disposable soft contact lenses in a boutique. She wore this same pair of lenses for 3 months daily without the appropriate care. This led to bilateral corneal transplantation with cataract extraction and also trabeculectomy in the right eye. When last seen, both grafts were crystal clear but the visual acuities were far from satisfactory. She also had bilateral secondary glaucoma, barely controlled by topical medication. Actually, the physical features and the wearing time characteristics of the disposable soft contact lenses created unprecedented difficulties to the medical surveillance of their wearers. Without the right assistance they tend to become careless regarding routine cleaning. They also feel free to buy less expensive lenses, to use saline instead of lens solutions, to violate the limits of wearing time and to extend the use over the sleeping period. Additionally, the aggressive marketing and the wide distribution of these lenses increase the chances that economically or educationally unprepared people will acquire them. The question that remains is: Is the present case an accidental event or an example of what is likely to happen in the future if the indiscriminate selling of disposable soft contact lenses continues to evolve?Este é o relato de uma paciente do sexo feminino, de 19 anos, com ceratite bilateral por Acanthamoeba, devido ao uso de lentes de contato descartáveis, adquiridas em uma butique. Fez uso do mesmo par de lentes durante três meses, sem os cuidados adequados. Foi submetida a transplante penetrante de córnea e facectomia bilateral, além de trabeculectomia no olho direito. Quando vista pela última vez, os enxertos estavam transparentes, mas a visão de ambos os olhos não era satisfatória. Ela também apresentava glaucoma secundário bilateral, controlado precariamente com medicação tópica. Ocorre que, as características físicas e o regime de uso das lentes de contato gelatinosas descartáveis criam dificuldades adicionais para a vigilância médica dos seus usuários. Sem a assistência correta, eles relaxam com a rotina de limpeza, compram lentes mais baratas, usam soro fisiológico ao invés das soluções adequadas, violam os limites de uso e dormem com as mesmas. Além disso, o "marketing" agressivo e a ampla distribuição dessas lentes aumentam as chances de que pessoas, não preparadas econômica e educacionalmente, venham ter acesso às mesmas. A pergunta que fica é: Seria o presente caso um evento acidental ou um exemplo do que pode acontecer no futuro caso as lentes de contato descartáveis continuem sendo vendidas indiscriminadamente

Ecological risk assessment for contaminated sites in Italy: Guidelines and path forward

Ecological risk assessment (ERA) is defined as an iterative process that evaluates the likelihood of adverse ecological effects resulting from exposure to one or more stressors. Although ERA is recognized as a valuable procedure to better address efforts and strategies for site remediation, in Europe a common framework for the implementation of ERA in the management of contaminated sites is lacking. In Italy, there are no legally binding provisions regulating the direct assessment of potential likelihood of ecological risks. In this context, the main objective of this article was to develop a guideline to facilitate ERA application in support of an effective and sustainable management of contaminated sites in Italy and to facilitate a multistakeholder dialogue. The work was based on a critical review of existing ERA guidelines in the international context, as well as other regulatory documents and technical approaches dealing with the evaluation of ecological effects of chemical contaminants in different environmental compartments. Approaches and tools available in these documents were then used to prepare a proposed guideline for the Italian context; the proposed ERA guideline is meant to represent a flexible but robust approach that can be useful in evaluating existing data (e.g., from past investigations) as well as in the planning of site-specific investigations. To facilitate the direct application of the ERA procedure, the guideline was prepared including several templates of summary tables, checklists, and examples. The proposed ERA guideline could facilitate the decision-making process for contaminated sites with ecological values, although its application would necessarily require, at least in the initial phase, testing of its suitability to the Italian context and setting-up of a close dialogue and collaboration with local authorities and other stakeholders. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;00:1-7. (c) 2022 SETA

Application of Artificial Neural Network Models in Segmentation and Classification of Nodules in Breast Ultrasound Digital Images

This research presents a methodology for the automatic detection and characterization of breast sonographic findings. We performed the tests in ultrasound images obtained from breast phantoms made of tissue mimicking material. When the results were considerable, we applied the same techniques to clinical examinations. The process was started employing preprocessing (Wiener filter, equalization, and median filter) to minimize noise. Then, five segmentation techniques were investigated to determine the most concise representation of the lesion contour, enabling us to consider the neural network SOM as the most relevant. After the delimitation of the object, the most expressive features were defined to the morphological description of the finding, generating the input data to the neural Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) classifier. The accuracy achieved during training with simulated images was 94.2%, producing an AUC of 0.92. To evaluating the data generalization, the classification was performed with a group of unknown images to the system, both to simulators and to clinical trials, resulting in an accuracy of 90% and 81%, respectively. The proposed classifier proved to be an important tool for the diagnosis in breast ultrasound

Assessment of Climate Change Impacts in the North Adriatic Coastal Area. Part II: Consequences for Coastal Erosion Impacts at the Regional Scale

Coastal erosion is an issue of major concern for coastal managers and is expected to increase in magnitude and severity due to global climate change. This paper analyzes the potential consequences of climate change on coastal erosion (e.g., impacts on beaches, wetlands and protected areas) by applying a Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) methodology to the North Adriatic (NA) coast of Italy. The approach employs hazard scenarios from a multi-model chain in order to project the spatial and temporal patterns of relevant coastal erosion stressors (i.e., increases in mean sea-level, changes in wave height and variations in the sediment mobility at the sea bottom) under the A1B climate change scenario. Site-specific environmental and socio-economic indicators (e.g., vegetation cover, geomorphology, population) and hazard metrics are then aggregated by means of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) with the aim to provide an example of exposure, susceptibility, risk and damage maps for the NA region. Among seasonal exposure maps winter and autumn depict the worse situation in 2070–2100, and locally around the Po river delta. Risk maps highlight that the receptors at higher risk are beaches, wetlands and river mouths. The work presents the results of the RRA tested in the NA region, discussing how spatial risk mapping can be used to establish relative priorities for intervention, to identify hot-spot areas and to provide a basis for the definition of coastal adaptation and management strategies.publishedVersio