Objectives

The general goal of Nat4Health is to determine the risk to human health associated to chemical and biological contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in agriculture and livestock scenarios and the natural attenuation processes that could buffer the contamination spreading.

General activities

• Development of multimatrix analytical methods for chemical and biological CECs.
• Field reconnaissance about the occurrence and propagation of CECs in agricultural parcels irrigated with WWTP effluents impacted water and their potential entry into the food chain.
• Close-up on CEC removal in soils under different irrigation regime, with special attention on the role played by microbial degradation.
• Evaluation of extensive and intensive livestock as a source of contamination and the potential airborne dissemination.
• Assessment of the health risk derived from the spread of persistent, mobile, and toxic compounds, hormones, antibiotics, antibiotic resistant bacteria, virus, and protozoa.

Expected results

Nat4Health will lay the foundations for creating the technical, diagnostic and risk analysis infrastructure necessary to identify and quantify chemical and biological CECs transmissible through water, food and air and accurately determine their real relevance to human public health.

Grant PID2020-118521RB-I00 funded by: