The effect of lockdown on air quality in Milan was assessed.• The trends of 9 pollutants in meteorologically comparable periods were studied. • Lockdown determined a significant reduction of PM 10 , PM 2.5 , BC, benzene, CO and NO x . • SO 2 remained unchanged in the more peripheral areas. • Part of the ozone increase was probably due to the lower NO measured during lockdown.

Abstract:The use of water disinfection as a public health measure reduces the spread of diseases. Various disinfection technologies can be used to meet the pathogen inactivation demand in water. This work is an overview of the main disinfection technologies of wastewater and drinking water that reports for the conventional processes the action mechanism, the possible formation of by-products, the operative conditions, the advantages and disadvantages. For advanced and natural processes the action mechanisms are reported. Advanced technologies are interesting but are still in the research state, while conventional technologies are the most used. There is a tendency, especially in Italy, to use chlorine-based disinfectant, despite in some forms could lead to production of disinfection by-products.

The issues concerning the management of sewage sludge produced in wastewater treatment plants are becoming more important in Europe due to: (i) the modification of sludge quality (biological and chemical sludge are often mixed with negative impacts on sludge management, especially for land application); (ii) the evolution of legislation (landfill disposal is banned in many European countries); and (iii) the technologies for energy and material recovery from sludge not being fully applied in all European Member States. Furthermore, Directive 2018/851/EC introduced the waste hierarchy that involved a new strategy with the prevention in waste production and the minimization of landfill disposal. In this context, biological sewage sludge can be treated in order to produce more stabilized residues: the biosolids. In some European countries, the reuse of biosolids as soil improver/fertilizer in arable crops represents the most used option. In order to control the quality of biosolids used for land application, every Member State has issued a national regulation based on the European directive. The aim of this work is to compare the different approaches provided by European Member States for the reuse of biosolids in agricultural soils. A focus on the regulation of countries that reuse significant amount of biosolids for land application was performed. Finally, a detailed study on Italian legislation both at national and regional levels is reported.

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