The Project

The activities carried out by the Working Group (WG) for Health Impact Assessment (HIA) under the Project "Health Impact Assessment: training of health personnel pertaining to regional control bodies and in-depth study of the ISS Guidelines" concern the in-depth study of the scientific issues recommended for the conduct of HIA studies that enable the expression of institutional opinions within the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure conducted by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, for the issuance of the decree of authorization for the plant's operation. The project is carried out in collaboration with Friuli Venezia Giulia, Marche and Sardinia Regions and with the Struttura Tematica Ambiente Prevenzione e Salute, Regional Agency for Prevention, Environment and Energy of Emilia-Romagna, in order to take into account the methodologies used in the regional sphere and to seek a homogeneity of approach to the HIA studies conducted locally and nationally.

For some years now, partly as a result of some situations of particular national resonance that have highlighted the need for populations to participate more in decisions that affect the development and change of their territories, there has been growing community concern about health risks potentially associated with environmental impacts produced by production and industrial facilities. 
With the release of the new EIA Directive (Directive 2014/52/EC), special emphasis (Art. 4) was placed on the assessment of impacts on "population and health." The Italian transposition of the Directive (Decree n.104/2017) interpreted this Recommendation by introducing the HIA study mandatory for large combustion plants, and in general to plants falling under point 1) of Annex II and to projects concerning thermal power plants and other combustion plants with a thermal power exceeding 300 MWth, referred to in point 2) of the same Annex II, of Legislative Decree 152/2066 as amended. 
The current attention paid to health is a direct consequence of the limited consideration given in past years to the health impacts determined by the exposure of populations to pollutants emitted by industries during normal operation and of authorization procedures based primarily on environmental and non-health aspects. Although the authorization procedures, in line with the various European Directives on Environmental Impact Assessment and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, better known as the IPPC Directive and the IED Directive, have effectively worked toward a continuous reduction of the impacts on the environment, health aspects have not always been carefully considered within the actual authorization process, excluding the participation of health experts within the specific assessment committees.  
With the Italian transposition of the new EIA Directive, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità was given the task of drafting the Guidelines (LG) for HIA to which the proponent must refer when developing its study.  The Guidelines were approved by the Ministry of Health (DM March 27, 2019) and published in the Official Gazette No. 126 of May 31, 2019. In addition, the transposition also approved the participation of health experts within the EIA Commission of the Ministry of Environment (now Ministry of Environment and Energy Security) for the analysis of health aspects for projects that do not fall into the categories for which HIA is mandatory.
The ISS HIA WG is in charge of conducting the procedure of evaluating the Proponent's HIA dossiers within the EIA of projects falling under the above-mentioned points and giving an opinion on their implementation.
Since the new directive came into force and the LG HIAs were published, the WG has participated in the EIA/HIA of more than 40 projects involving facilities of national significance, mainly modification/conversion of existing Thermoelectric Power Plants (CTEs), new CTEs  and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Storage and Regasification Facilities. The opinions issued can be consulted in the Activity section. 
The experience gained in the evaluation of HIA dossiers and the collaboration with the regional structures mentioned above, with respect to the experiences conducted at the local level, allowed the CCM project to be carried out by deepening the technical-scientific methodologies useful for HIA (which are described in the Istisan Report 22/35, in the Documents section) together with the preparation of training activities for national and regional socio-health and environmental personnel.

At the conclusion of the project, a conference was organized by the Ministry of Health and the Istituto Superiore di Sanità to present the results achieved by the CCM-VIS project. Attached are the papers presented during the event