Publications by authors named "C Albonico"
Microplastic Contamination in Snow from Western Italian Alps.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
January 2021
Recent studies have documented the presence of microplastics (MPs) in remote areas, including soils or sediments collected in mountain and glacier environments, but information on their presence in snow is scant. The present study aimed at exploring the presence of MPs in residual snow collected in four locations of the Aosta Valley (Western Italian Alps), with different accessibility and human presence. Overall, the µ-FTIR analyses confirmed the presence of 18 MPs in snow, 7 (39%) items were fibres, while 11 (61%) were fragments.
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- Scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) is a cost-effective technique for analyzing the shape and chemical makeup of inorganic fibers, particularly asbestos.
- While SEM-EDS is crucial for accurate asbestos quantification in complex natural samples, it is also time-consuming and dependent on the skill of the operator.
- The proposed method enhances efficiency by first identifying asbestos particle shapes before analyzing their composition, leading to quick and precise measurements with less than 10% error in tests.
The World Health Organization estimates that 100 thousand people in the world die every year from asbestos-related cancers and more than 300 thousand European citizens are expected to die from asbestos-related mesothelioma by 2030. Both the European and the Italian legislations have banned the manufacture, importation, processing and distribution in commerce of asbestos-containing products and have recommended action plans for the safe removal of asbestos from public and private buildings. This paper describes the quantitative mapping of asbestos-cement covers over a large mountainous region of Italian Western Alps using the Multispectral Infrared and Visible Imaging Spectrometer sensor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe role of persistently high serum aluminum levels (sAl) in the pathogenesis of dialysis encephalopathy (DE) was evaluated in two groups selected from 170 patients dialyzed with low Al fluids. Group 1 (G1) consisted of 24 patients showing two or more sAl below 50 micrograms/l and group 2 (G2) consisted of 27 patients with sAl above 100 micrograms/l in at least 2 of 3 determinations. The two groups did not show any significant difference for age, sex, education or duration of the dialysis treatment.
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