Trace Element Concentrations Measured in a Biomonitor (Tree Bark) for Assessing Mortality and Morbidity of Urban Population: A New Promising Approach for Exploiting the Potential of Public Health Data

The usefulness of bioindicators to study the state of the environment in different compartments (air, water, and soil) has been demonstrated for a long time. All persistent pollutants can be measured in some form of bioindicator, and numerous organisms are suitable for the biomonitoring purpose. In most of the works on this topic, bioindicators are used to highlight the impact of human activities. Generally, samples collected from polluted areas are compared with samples from an area considered as clean, or samples from areas characterized by different pollution sources are compared with each other. An approach that has not been attempted consists in correlating directly data on environmental quality obtained by bioindicators with parameters measuring the population health. In the present study, the concentrations of As, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn measured by atomic emission spectrometry (ICP OES) in 56 samples of holm oak bark from trees located in urban parks and along streets in a Northern Italy city were related to the data describing the health status of the citizens. The concentrations of some of the 10 trace elements in the bioindicator were found significantly correlated with mortality and morbidity data regarding cardiac and respiratory diseases. The results, although preliminary, show the potential of this approach for implementing strategies aimed for disease prevention and health promotion in urban areas at risk, with the objective of reducing environmental and health inequalities.