[Pesticides in rural pathology]. / I pesticidi in patologia rurale.

Reference is made to the extensive use of pesticides in agriculture and the fact that many are highly toxic. The lack of information and legislative provisions makes agricultural workers particularly vulnerable to the several categories of poisons contained under the description "pesticides". The chlorinated and phosphoric organic compounds are of especial interest. The former include the derivatives of the phenoxycarboxylic acids, which can give rise to a product (tetrachlorobenzodioxine, or dioxine) that was responsible for the pollution at Seveso. The latter group contains the very commonly employed alkylthiophosphates (malathion, parathion, etc.). These are well-known inhibitors of acetylcholine esterase and thus responsible for harm to the nervous system. A comparable, but less intense effect on this esterase is possessed by the carbamates, which are increasingly being used in agriculture. It is hoped that, as in the past, suitable, oriented epidemiological surveys will be carried out in industry, designed to focus attention on the probable, but not yet documented chronic damage that many of these products cause to the human body.

[Occupational toxic hepatopathies. Current etiopathogenetic and diagnostic trends]. / Epatopatie tossiche professionali. Orientamenti eziopatogenetici e dignostici attuali.

The large number of xenobiotic agents, associated with work or otherwise, that can attack the body, and the fundamental part played by the liver in the control of metabolic homeostasis offered the occasion for an examination of the present position with regard to the aetiopathogenesis and diagnosis of occupational toxic diseases of the liver. Attention is particularly directed to recent biochemical knowledge (molecular and cellular), to the main aetiopathogenetic features, and to the most modern criteria for the evaluation of liver damage, especially that of a chronic kind.