Delle Rose M.,, 2007, Human health risks related to water resources management and urban pollution (Salento, southern Italy)., Epitome (Udine) 2 (2007): 84.,
URL: http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/118246

Recent epidemiological studies focused that the Salento people have an higher exposure to gastroenteritis in comparison to Italian population and the exposure to urinary bladder cancer is particularly high. This paper supports the hypothesis that the aforementioned health risks can be related to the present water resources management and urban pollution. The Salento peninsula, where Quaternary calcarenites and clays overlie Tertiary and Cretaceous carbonates, is characterized by karst morphologies. It hosts discontinuous shallow aquifers, locally used for irrigation, and a huge deep coastal karst aquifer intensively exploited for human purposes. Since the first settlements, landscapes were modified to drain the surface waters and discharge floods. The oldest wells excavated to draw groundwater go back even to the Bronze Age and testify archaic know-how about the water supplying. The Salento is presently crossed by a number of network of artificial and fluvial karst channels strongly modified owing to the urbanisation of territory. The main channels system, the Asso network, was joined to the Parlatano water sink and to other five minor karst sinks about 75 years ago, to solve the secular malaria scourge. To start from the 1991, this man-made fluvial-karst system have been used to discharge municipal and industrial wastewater from treatment plants. This use was encouraged by the necessity to restore the poor reserve of the deep aquifer. Actually, the terminal sinks of the Asso fluvial-karst system absolved the functions of_ storm water drainage wells, aquifer remediation-related wells and underground injection regulated wastewater disposal systems. Urbanisation profoundly affects groundwater recharge and groundwater quality and, as revealed a recent literature, the depth and the rate at which contamination penetrate urban aquifer remain poorly understood. Physic-chemical and bacteriological features of flowing water through the Parlatano water sink and groundwater drain by the Guardati hydraulic structure of Lecce were monitored during the last two years. At the same time, the tectono-stratigraphic arrangement of the sites was studied. About the Parlatano, the analysed waters presented high bacterial amount with Escherichia coli MPN/100 mL higher than the value established by law. High nitrate concentrations and significative nitrite and ammonia concentrations are also detected. A geological survey of the water sink, allowed the recognition of a fault dissecting the pre Quaternary substratum that can determine direct injections of wastewater in the deep aquifer. Concerning the waters sampled at the Guardati structure, variable amount of fecal pollution as well as nitrate concentration were measured. Occasionally, nitrites had detected too. Comparing this data with the rain heights recorded by the university meteorological station, a clear direct correlation is established. A pervasive network of kastified fractures inside the local Miocene calcarenites, recognized during the geological survey, allow fast infiltrations, namely in order of few hours or at most some days. So, the pollutants dispelled through sewer conduits can contaminated the groundwater also in occasion of usual rainfalls. To reduce the risks of the human health due to the high amount of organic pollutant systematically injected into the Salento aquifers, hypo-chlorination procedures of the water are ponderously realized. However, the impossibility of the total inactivation of some pathogenic virus by hypo-chlorination is largely exposed by a specific literature, whereas other researches stressed the elevate risk to urinary bladder cancer of the peoples drinking such treated waters. So, the water resources management is an hard task, being both the discharges into karst sinks and the escapes through sewers of wastewater, at enmity with the safeguard aquifers by pollutant displacements and the need to protect the public health.

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