Ricerc@Sapienza

Finkelstein invited physicians and researchers interested in mesothelioma to investigate on past usage of talcum powders by affected people. In Italy,
asbestos contamination in talc for indus trial use has been documented, and, as he underlines tremolite contamination at low levels of cosmetic and pharmaceutical talc has been reported in USA by Blount and Gordon and colleagues.
In the Italian National Mesothelioma Register (ReNaM), the analysis of intensive exposure to talc has been evaluated with respect to occupational and environmental history.

Introduction: The asbestos industry began operations in Colombia in 1942, with an asbestos-cement facility located in the municipality of Sibaté. In recent years residents from Sibaté have been complaining about what they consider is an unusually large number of people diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases in the town. A study to analyze the situation of Sibaté started in 2015, to verify if the number of asbestos related diseases being diagnosed were higher than expected, and to identify potential asbestos exposure sources in the town.

In the present work we report the full structural and spectroscopic characterization of an UICC crocidolite standard sample, that is a fibrous riebeckite from Koegas Mine, Northern Cape (South Africa). The chemical composition was obtained by SEM-EDS and cation site partition was retrieved by complementing chemical, Mössbauer and X-ray powder diffraction data. Cell parameters, fractional coordinates, and site scattering for M(1), M(2), M(3), M(4) were refined using the Rietveld method.

Surface reactivity of a fibrous tremolite sample from Castelluccio Superiore (Italy) was investigated by means of free radical generation following incubation in H2O2solution buffered at pH 7.4, for several time points, ranging from 1 day to 1 month. Results obtained were compared with those of another fibrous tremolite sample (from Maryland, USA), with much smaller surface area. Structural, morphological, and chemical alterations induced on tremolite by incubation were investigated by HR-TEM/EDS.

In this work, hyperspectral imaging in the short wave infrared range (SWIR: 1000-2500 nm) coupled with chemometric techniques was evaluated as an analytical tool to detect and classify different asbestos minerals, such as amosite ((Fe2+)2(Fe2+,Mg)5Si8O22(OH)2)), crocidolite (Na2(Mg,Fe)6Si8O22(OH)2) and chrysotile (Mg3(Si2O5)(OH)4), contained in cement matrices. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used for data exploration and Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogies (SIMCA) for sample classification.

Asbestos recognition, inside different matrices (i.e. Asbestos Containing Materials: ACMs), is of great importance both "in situ" and in the further analysis at lab scale. Among the industrial sectors utilizing asbestos, the building and construction sector is the most important, especially with reference to all the constructions built before the '90s. The large utilization of asbestos is mainly linked to its technical properties (i.e. resistance to abrasion, heat and chemicals).