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In this contribution, a revision of ionizing radiations exposed workers' dosimetric data in four hospital structures is showed, and, consequently, recommended optimization measures are identified.

Italian law 125/2001 implementation requires to Occupational Health Physicians to carry out alcohol levels checks in the workplaces. Firstly, this contribution proposes to specify the methodological differences between breathing alcohol concentration, BrAC, and blood alcohol concentration, BAC, and also to show the different sampling strategies. Therefore, a standardised practice proposal for alcohol levels determinations in workers communities is presented, in the contest of a modern Occupational Health services "integrated quality system".

It has been known for many years that blood transfusions may have immunomodulatory effects, however an ultimate explanation of this phenomenon is lacking. In the present paper we report that the concentrations of soluble HLA class I (sHLA-I) and soluble Fas ligand (sFasL) molecules in supernatants of blood components which contain elevated numbers of residual donor leukocytes, like red blood cells and random-donor platelets, are significantly higher than in other blood components. Elevated amounts of sFasL molecules are also found in some commercial immunoglobulin preparations. sHLA-I and sFasL molecules in blood components and in immunoglobulin preparations are biologically active in vitro as they inhibit mixed lymphocyte responses and cytotoxic T cell activity in allogeneic and autologous combinations and induce apoptosis in Fas-positive cells. If these results are paralleled in vivo the amount of sHLA-I and sFasL molecules should be taken into account in clinical practice in order to select the blood component and the immunoglobulin preparation which could induce the desired immunomodulatory effect in the recipient.