P h o t o c a t a l y t i c S u p e r f i c i a l T r e a t m e n t s
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building typologies. If the planning of the environment is not suitable and pollutants are
not opportunely refined, conditions of risk can be created for the health of the
hospitalized sick people, of the working personnel and of the visitors.
In these environments live for a more or less long period, people with condition of
weakened health and therefore subjects potentially more sensitive to the microbial
agents. The greatest risks found in these environments are those connected to the level
of environmental microbial contamination. Surgical and critical care departments are
particular unities for which are necessary protocols of sanitation and a close observance
of the manoeuvre of containment so that to guarantee an inferior bacterial contamination
to the verifiable middle level in the normal environments of life, that can provoke
infections, defined hospitalized, in patients already weakened by the physical point of
view. A meaningful risk of microbial contamination of the air is connected to the plant of
treatment of the air, when the maintenance of the filters is not made in suitable way or
rather with in comparison to the protocols of prevention.
Factors of risk that influence the human health in the hospital environments, are of 3
types: chemical, physical and biological/microbiological. In the Italian system, at the
moment, don't exist yet univocal standardized parameters of reference for being able to
appraise the degree of biological indoor pollution. Generally to provide for this lack,
foreign regulations are used as reference, mainly those from USA.
For the quality of the air of the operating rooms, important indications are furnished in
the guidelines worded by ISPESL, Superior Institute for the Prevention and the Safety of
the Work, concerning the standards of hygiene and environmental safety in these
environments, and some recommendations elaborated by the Superior institute of Health
on the base of documents produced by the Federal Standard of the United States (FS
USA) and the French regulations are furnished.
On the international plan, the World Health Organization and in the Reports of the MRC
(Medical Research Council), of the DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security), of
limits for the operating rooms are furnished, and a series of indications on the
individualization of zones to a great cleaning in the operating blocks are brought.
The legislation that regulates the sanitary institutes is very complex, difficult to be
reduced to a unique normative frame. The sanitary legislation is formed from national
and regional regulations and town dispositions.
Within hospital institutes, besides the above mentioned national regular normative,
composed by decrees, laws and circulars, have been elaborate and published by
ISPESL, Superior Institute for the Prevention and the Safety of the Work, through
guidelines, some recommendations to conform and to specify in detail dispositions and
prescriptions.
Of interest for this work are those related to the quality of the air in confined
environments, concerning "The evaluation of the risk, D.Lgs. 626/94: Application to the
structures of the National Sanitary Service (S.S.N.)" and "The definition of the safety
standards and environmental hygiene of the operating departments."
Paints and photocatalytic films as technological solution to the pollution in
hospital environment
From the analysis has emerged that the present factors of risk in the hospital or sanitary
environments are physical, chemical, but above all biological/microbiological. This last
factor of risk is responsible of infections that can bring the patient, already with physical
deficit, to further complications of the clinical frame, up to come, in extreme cases, to the
death. To attenuate the indoor pollution present in these environments mostly frequented
by subjects defined "weak", it can be acted on the correct planning, installation and
maintenance of the air conditioning and ventilation systems, together with a good routine
of cleaning of these places. However, very often, the maintenance of the fittings is
effected with few attention and with expirations notably dilute in time; or, daily and
