WHO CC for Environmental Health in Contaminated Sites

Since 2013, the Unit of Environmental and Social Epidemiology of the Department of Environment and Health (ISS) has been designated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health in Contaminated Sites ITA-97.

The WHO CC ITA-97 works in close collaboration with the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health (ECEH, Bonn, Germany) to provide technical support to WHO in the following areas:

1. To support to WHO's technical work towards (i) assessing the health risks and impacts of contaminated sites from an equity perspective; (ii) strengthening capacity of Member States on environmental health issues related to contaminated sites.
2. To support WHO's technical work to evaluating the wide-ranging environmental health dimensions of contaminated sites, with attention to the state-of-the-art knowledge on the effects and impacts of extreme weather events, addressing the triple environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.

The Unit of Environmental and Social Epidemiology has been coordinating the SENTIERI study (Epidemiological Study of Residents in National Priority Contaminated Sites) since 2007. SENTIERI, supported by the Ministry of Health, is an epidemiological surveillance system of populations living in the Italian contaminated sites of interest for remediation. The latest SENTIERI Report (the sixth) and previous Reports are available (in Italian) at: SENTIERI – Epidemiological Study of Residents in National Priority Contaminated Sites. Sixth Report

For more information see WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health in Contaminated Sites, ITA-97