Polluted online information? Surfing Italian websites dealing with the topic of waste and health

In the field of health communication, a particularly critical issue is communication to the public of environmental risks, especially on topics for which there is still a high degree of scientific uncertainty regarding risk estimates. One such topic is undoubtedly the impact of waste on people's health. The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence and characteristics of Italian websites dealing with the topic of waste and health. The keywords 'waste' and 'health' were entered in 2010 in the three most commonly used search engines, and the first five pages were analysed. The selected websites were coded according to the content analysis method. For websites of interest we evaluated the 'page rank'. Out of the 150 occurrences analysed, the number of websites found to deal with this subject was only 19, four of which were of an institutional nature. The majority of websites gave a message of increased health risk associated with the three kinds of waste disposal tackled. As regards visibility, only one of the four institutional websites maintained its position on the first page of the three search engines. We found that institutional health websites have low visibility, despite extensive media coverage of waste and health issues in Italy as a result of the Naples case, which was debated globally. This indicates that public health institutions' web strategies are basically unable to meet people's health information requirements, which could strengthen rival health information providers.