Hospital wastewater (HWW) can contain hazardous substances, such as pharmaceutical residues, chemical hazardous substances, pathogens and radioisotopes. Due to these substances, hospital wastewater can represent a chemical, biological and physical risk for public and environmental health. In particular, several studies demonstrate that the main effects of these substances can't be neutralised by wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). These substances can be found in a wide range of concentrations due to the size of a hospital, the bed density, number of inpatients and outpatients, the number and the type of wards, the number and types of services, the country and the season. Some hazardous substances produced in hospital facilities have a regulatory status and are treated like waste and are disposed of accordingly (i.e., dental amalgam and medications). Legislation is quite homogeneous for these substances in all industrial countries. Problems that have emerged in the last decade concern substances and microorganisms that don't have a regulatory status, such as antibiotic residues, drugs and specific pathogens. At a global level, guidelines exist for treatment methods for these effluents, but legislation in all major industrial countries don't contain limitations on these parameters. Therefore, a monitoring system is necessary for these effluents as well as for substances and pathogens, as these elements can represent a risk to the environment and public health.

Summary Food safety is a critical public health issue for consumers and the food industry because microbiological contamination of food causes considerable social and economic burdens on health care. Most foodborne illness comes from animal production, but as of the mid‐1990s in the United States and more recently in the European Union, the contribution of fresh produce to foodborne outbreaks has rapidly increased. Recent studies have suggested that sterilization with nonthermal plasma could be a viable alternative to the traditional methods for the decontamination of heat‐sensitive materials or food because this technique proves capable of eliminating micro‐organisms on surfaces without altering the substrate. In the last 10 years, researchers have used nonthermal plasma in a variety of food inoculated with many bacterial species. All of these experiments were conducted exclusively in a laboratory and, to our knowledge, this technique has not been used in an industrial setting. Thus, the purpose of this review is to understand whether this technology could be used at the industrial level. The latest researches using nonthermal plasma on fresh produce were analysed. These evaluations have focused on the log reduction of micro‐organisms and the treatment time.

Monitoring and interpreting the growth of preterm infants is a major clinical task for neonatologists. The effectiveness of this process depends upon the robustness of the standard selected. Concerns have been raised regarding the nature of the charts currently being used, as well as their appropriateness for present-day neonatal care. To overcome these problems, there is a need for new prescriptive standards based on a population of preterm infants without evidence of impaired fetal growth and born to low-risk women followed up since early pregnancy for precise gestational age dating. Preterm infants contributing to the new standards should be free of congenital malformations and major clinical conditions associated with impaired postnatal growth. These infants should receive standardised, evidence-based clinical care and should follow current feeding recommendations based on exclusive/predominant breastfeeding. This strategy should provide a population that is conceptually as close as possible to the prescriptive approach used for the construction of the WHO infant and child growth standards. New international standards constructed in this way should contribute to the evidence-based care of these preterm infants.

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