Evidence of negative health effects of solid waste management is uncertain. Available reviews suggests the use of biomarkers in human biomonitoring (HBM) to detect low exposure levels. In September 2013, a waste-to-energy plant located in the Turin (Italy) went into operation. The SPoTT (acronym for Population health Surveillance in the Turin incinerator's area) monitoring program was set up to assess the potential health impact caused by the plant. The paper illustrates the results of HBM of metals in the workers before the plant went into operation and then at 1 year and 3 years. This study is one of the few focusing on workers with a longitudinal design (the first in Italy).

Eighteen metals in urine and lead in blood were determined by sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Information on participant habits and other characteristics that could potentially affect metals concentrations were collected via a structured questionnaire. Subjects were classified according to their work role at the facility: administrative staff workers (AW); plant workers (PW). Nonparametric methods were used to evaluate the changes in metals concentration over time.

Comparison of the metals concentration in the samples taken at baseline and at the following two-time points shows a general decrease in levels: urinary concentration of beryllium (Be), cobalt (Co), mercury (Hg), Ir, nickel (Ni), tin (Sn), thallium (Tl), and blood level of lead (Pb) among the PW and Ir and Pd among the AW were significantly lower at T2 versus baseline. A decrease was also recorded in arsenic (As) among the PW and in cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), palladium (Pd), rhodium (Rh), and zinc (Zn) for both groups, whereas the levels of copper (Cu) and vanadium (V) remained unchanged over time. The downward trend remained also after taking confounding factors into account. The only exceptions were Mn, Pt, Sb among the PW: increase levels between T0 and T2 were recorded, which cannot be specifically attributable to the plant activity. The median urinary and blood concentrations of the metals were lower than those reported in the literature and were below the occupational reference values at all three-time points. Our results are consistent with those reported for the cohort of local residents and with the ambient air measurements.

固体废物管理对健康的负面影响的证据尚不确定。现有的评论建议在人类生物监测（HBM）中使用生物标志物来检测低暴露水平。2013年9月，位于意大利都灵的一座垃圾发电厂开始运营。设立了SPoTT（都灵焚化炉地区人口健康监测的缩写）监视程序，以评估该植物对健康的潜在影响。该文件说明了工厂投产之前以及随后的1年和3年工人金属中HBM的结果。这项研究是针对纵向设计工人的少数研究之一（意大利首次进行）。

尿液中的十八种金属和血液中的铅通过扇形场电感耦合等离子体质谱法测定。通过结构化问卷收集了有关参与者习惯和其他可能影响金属浓度的特征的信息。根据对象在设施中的工作角色将其分类：行政工作人员（AW）；工厂工人（PW）。非参数方法用于评估金属浓度随时间的变化。

比较基线和以下两个时间点采集的样品中的金属浓度，表明其水平普遍下降：铍（Be），钴（Co），汞（Hg），Ir，镍（Ni）的尿中浓度在T2时，PW中的锡（Sn），th（Tl）和铅的血液水平（Pb）与基线相比在T2时显着降低。两组中砷（As）和镉（Cd），铬（Cr），钯（Pd），铑（Rh）和锌（Zn）的含量也均下降，而铜（铜和钒（V）随时间保持不变。考虑到混杂因素后，下降趋势仍然保持。唯一的例外是PW中的Mn，Pt，Sb：记录到T0和T2之间的增加水平，这不能具体归因于植物活性。这些金属的尿液和血液中值均低于文献报道的值，并且在所有三个时间点均低于职业参考值。我们的结果与当地居民的研究结果以及环境空气测量结果一致。