As it is known, fibrous minerals (regulated and not), present in geological matrices represent a cause of danger to health, as they are potential environmental pollutants. Indeed, although today many countries have banned the use and marketing of asbestos, the environmental or occupational exposure of the population represents an environmental problem that is still unresolved. Human activities (e.g. agriculture, mining) can accelerate/trigger the processes of release of fibrous minerals into the environment, causing at the same time soil consumption and degradation. This proposal intends to deepen the study of innovative methods for the automatic classification of combined optical and X-ray images of geomaterials, with particular reference to potentially harmful constituents for humans and the environment, while giving at the same time useful quantitative results aimed at inertization of the same and their potential recycling and/or reuse in a circular economy key. The classical and advanced analytical methodologies for characterizing asbestos-bearing geomatrices may shed new light towards waste management and will permit to consider them from neglected geomaterial to a precious resource of metals and minerals of industrial interest. At the same time, knowledge of the natural occurrences of asbestos-bearing geomatrices will bring benefits in term of quality of available water and soil management and their availability in the context of climate change.

The candidate’s skill must comprise the techniques in the field of recognition and automatic digitization of optical, X-ray and micro-tomographic images of artificial and natural stone materials.

The responsible is part of a research group, whose members are also from other universities, with which she has been collaborating for years. Laboratories of the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences to be used: a) Geoinformatics; b) electron microscopy; c) fluorescence and X-ray diffractometry; d) non-destructive analysis XRF, Raman, FT-IR and petrophysics; e) optical microscopy; f) geochemistry.Activity will be also carried out with the start-up CIRTAA S.r.l , which has patented procedures for the inertization of geomaterials containing asbestos, and agreements with ARPA Sicily and the Elettra synchrotron of Trieste will allow the development of protocols.