The pollution of water resources and interventions to mitigate and control environmental impact

The urban sewage coming from residential or commercial compounds are mainly characterized with wastes of human metabolism or activities linked to the use of compounds as cleaning, washing, watering and so on. Especially in the sewage of metropolitan areas, new categories of pollutants, so called “Emerging Pollutants” (EP), were found.The polluting contents of EP are those that are residual coming from medicines, products used for skin and hair care, antibiotics for human and animal use, endocrine interferents, illegal drugs and so on. On this ground the paper wants to focalize on the Italian regulations and relating statuary treatments of water at the present time which do not take into consideration this new shape of pollution.After a short sketch of statutory treatments scheduled by regulations, the paper also tries to envisage in which way it might be possible to cope with this new polluting problem by advanced waste water treatments.For reason of room, the “water line” of urban sewage purification will be treated, leaving the “mud line” to another future paper.