Amalfi's Young Scientists: A Community-Wide Environmental Monitoring Initiative

The children of Amalfi become young scientists of the widespread laboratory for environmental monitoring across the entire municipal territory. In fact, the research project "Amalfi 4.0 CityZen Science" has started today, developed in synergy between the Department of Chemistry and Biology of the University of Salerno, led by Professor Carmine Capacchione, and the Municipality of Amalfi, led by Mayor Daniele Milano. The first and second-year middle school classes of the "G. Sasso" Comprehensive Institute met the professors of the University of Salerno in the Morelli Hall. "The focus," emphasized Professor Antonio Proto, professor of environmental chemistry at Unisa and project coordinator, "is to make the younger generations responsible. We involve the schools, so our children become responsible and at the same time we manage to obtain precise monitoring, in areas even outside the historic center and in the higher fractions to build a wide map. We will also replicate in October." An entire morning dedicated to the environment in Amalfi, in which two events moved simultaneously, the first dedicated to the air and the second to the cleaning of the seabed. "Sky and sea. The environment," said Ilaria Cuomo, the Environment Councillor of Amalfi, greeting the involved classes, "our priority resource, we must defend and preserve it. You must be many little vigilantes, checking that no one throws papers on the street or abandons waste." Following the learning phase, data collection will follow, with the distribution of 100 passive samplers to the children to be exposed for three weeks on the windows and balconies of their homes. Instructions were provided for identifying the geographical location of where to place them, and after three weeks the children will close the samplers and deliver them for analysis to create a map of the area with the detected nitrogen oxide values.