Quality problems in waters used for drinking purposes in Italy

With a grant from the Italian Ministry of the Environment, the National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) promoted and coordinated some activities aimed at determining the extent and the intensity of contamination of waters used for human consumption by some chemical agents, and describing causes and modalities of contamination and human health implications. The chemical agents examined were herbicides, nitrates, trihalomethanes, asbestos, manganese and fluoride. In this paper a first nationwide picture of these problems is reported.