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Local soil contamination, mainly associated with industrial facilities (both in operation and after closure), uncontrolled (industrial and/or municipal) waste landfills, mining and diffused leaching underground storage tanks and pipelines, is an actual and relevant environmental priority in Europe. Different approaches have been applied in the European countries during the past few years to develop the quality objectives for contaminated sites according to the following three categories: the limit value criterion for soil and groundwater; the absolute risk analysis for a given contaminated site; and the comparative (or relative) risk analysis among different potentially contaminated sites. The present paper gives, together with a synthetic state of the art of the contaminated site management situation at different EU countries, a view on the current experience, problems and regulatory requirements in Italy on these possible soil and groundwater quality approaches, also with comparative considerations to other significant European and international strategies

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Pharmaceuticals gather more than 1000 biologically active molecules used in human and veterinary medicine around the world. The increase in drugs consumption and the development of improved analytical environmental techniques have resulted in identifying these emerging pollutants in all aquatic compartments, ranging from surface water and groundwater ressources to the marine environment.Numerous investigations have indicated that a hundred of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are frequently detected in the aquatic environment, at international level, at concentrations ranging from ng/l to µg/l. The concentrations even surpass the mg/l level in sewage treatment effluents. Once there, they may be responsible for chronic poisoning of aquatic species due to their still effective biological activity. The European authorities have considered this hazard for years, leading to investigations only for new pharmaceuticals entering the market and when the predicted exposure concentration is greater than 100 ng/l.