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The sewage from urban settlements is an important cause of water pollution. Recent Italian legislation offers new possibilities for intervention in the purification of wastewater. The "Decreto Legislativo" 152 of April 3, 2006, indicating "Environmental Standards", recommends the possible use of constructed wetlands considered particularly suitable for small and medium communities according to low operating costs, lack of energy, and manageability. The Authors, after describing the characteristics of these facility, analyze the occupational risks associated with the control and maintenance of a experimental subsurface constructed wetland (H-SSF, SubSurface Horizontal Flow) coming to the conclusion that the management of this type of facility has a low risk of exposure to biological agents.

Brachytherapy is an effective radiotherapeutic treatment for localized prostatic cancer. The permanent brachytherapy is a particular kind of radiotherapy which, US guided, uses permanently implanted seeds containing radioactive sources (Pd103 or I 125). The procedure is minimally invasive and allows to obtain high percentage of success which is comparable to surgery. The possibility to confine permanent radioactive implants in a well delimitated area doesn't exclude the exposition of both the medical staff and family's members of implanted patients. The radiation exposure involves the medical physicists, the radiotherapists, the Medical Radiology Technician, the anaesthetists, the surgeons, the professional nurses but also, after the brachytherapy treatment, public and family members, comforters and cares. It's necessary to consider radiation safety aspects of brachytherapy in order to reduce the risks of exposition. At the end, several studies showed that cremation of bodies could be a possible radiation source that remains in the patient's ashes, potentially inhaled by crematorium staff or members of the public.

Some categories of workers (actors, teachers, singers) use a particular working tool: their voice. In order to assess the spread of dysphonia and its possible causes across a specific class of workers--the teachers of some schools in the city of Catania--we have set up a ad hoc questionnaire. A special database has been subsequently arranged, aimed at the statistical analysis of the responses obtained. The analysis of the responses shows that the phenomenon is more present in female than male teachers, 48% versus 30%. The dysphonia occurs mainly at the end of the working day, lasts throughout the school year and improves in summer, demonstrating the importance of teaching activity in its pathogenesis. One aspect especially stands out: dysphonia occurs exclusively in those individuals suffering from diseases with possible alterations of the voice, such as allergopathies, tireopathies and gastropathies. Therefore, work activity alone does not seem able to cause a chronic dysphonia, whereas the presence of diseases causing disability of vocal cords appears to play an important role.