Some of the global environmental challenges that are the focus of attention today are pollution of air and water resources, sustainability of the use of natural resources, the containment of climate change. In this scenario, monitoring and determining the causes of pollution are key elements to support policies for the protection of the health and quality of life of citizens: examples thereof are the monitoring of environmental radioactivity and the study of air quality, tools to determine and control the different sources of pollution. In order to develop effective policies to reduce air pollution, to protect the health of citizens, it is necessary to determine the sources of the atmospheric particulate matter and quantify their contribution. In particular, it is fundamental to distinguish between natural sources (such as marine spray or soil dust) and anthropogenic sources (such as traffic and heating) in order to determine the potentially most effective interventions.
INFN has developed considerable experience in the use of particle beam analysis (IBA) techniques, for high-efficiency, high-sensitivity detection and with reduced analysis times of most of the elements of interest. INFN has also developed integrated approaches that allow the synergistic use of information from additional ancillary and/or complementary analytical techniques. For discriminating among the various sources, INFN uses statistical techniques of multivariate analysis, which require input compositional data for a large number of samples, which are representative of the variations even on a large time scale. As part of the study on climate change, the reconstruction of the particulate matter transport phenomena, using models and the comparison of experimental data collected in dedicated simultaneous campaigns, in different sites is of particular interest.
INFN’s radioactivity measurement centres are a network for monitoring the presence of radioactive elements of natural and artificial origin in the environment, with measurement capacity and sensitivity that are among the best at international level to enable the accurate characterization and control of radioactivity in the territory in the event of nuclear accidents. Furthermore, by applying nuclear technologies, it is possible to measure radioactive contamination in materials (even in situ) or create maps on the radioactivity of the territory, predicting the content of Uranium, Thorium and Potassium-40 and the surface distribution of Cesium-137 of anthropogenic origin.
INFN has a specialized centre for the study of atmospheric particulate matter, the Laboratory of Nuclear Techniques for the Environment and Cultural Heritage (LABEC), while the Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS), thanks to the 1400 metre-rock overhanging them, are a reference centre for very low-bottom radioactivity measurements.
