Review Treatments of asbestos containing wastes D. Spasiano a, * , F. Pirozzi b a Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale, Edile, del Territorio e di Chimica, Politecnico di Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy b Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile ed Ambientale, Universit a di Napoli Federico II, Via Claudio, 21, 80125, Napoli, Italy article info Article history: Received 18 April 2017 Received in revised form 12 August 2017 Accepted 23 August 2017 Keywords: Asbestos containing waste Waste treatment Chrysotile Asbestos detoxification abstract Since the second half of the twentieth century, many studies have indicated inhalation of asbestos fibers as the main cause of deadly diseases including fibrosis and cancer. Consequently, since the beginning of the 80s, many countries started banning production and use of asbestos containing products (ACP), although still present in private and public buildings. Due to some extraordinary catastrophic events and/ or the aging of these products, people's health and environmental risk associated with the inhalation of asbestos fibers keeps being high even in those countries where it was banned. For these reasons, many communities are developing plans for an environmental and sanitary safe asbestos removal and man- agement. Asbestos containing wastes (ACW) are usually disposed in controlled landfills, but this practice does not definitively eliminate the problems related with asbestos fiber release and conflicts with the ideas of sustainable land use, recycling, and closing material cycles. Consequently, many scientific papers and patents proposed physical, chemical, and biological treatments aimed to the detoxification of ACW (or the reduction of their health effects) and looking for the adoption of technologies, which allow the reuse of the end-products. By including recent relevant bibliography, this report summarizes the status of the most important and innovative treatments of ACW, providing main operating parameters, ad- vantages, and disadvantages. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 82 2. Solidification and stabilization ........................................................ ............................................... 83 3. Vitrification ....................................................................................................................... 84 4. Thermal treatments ................................................................................................................. 84 5. Mechanical treatments ........................................................... .................................................. 86 6. Chemical treatments ............................................................ ................................................... 86 7. Biological treatments ............................................................................................................... 88 8. Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 89 Acknowledgements ............................................................ .................................................... 89 Supplementary data ................................................................................................................ 89 References ......................................................................................................................... 89 1. Introduction Asbestos is a group of six naturally-occurring fibrous silicate minerals (chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, tremolite, anthophyllite, and actinolite) which has been widely used because of its low thermal conductivity, high mechanical strength, resistance to chemical and biological attacks, and low cost (Dellisanti et al., 2009). Asbestos was already used in ancient times to produce materials resistant to fire, as described by Pliny the Elder (Røe and Stella, 2015). However, the industrial exploitation of this resource * Corresponding author. E-mail address: danilo.spasiano@poliba.it (D. Spasiano). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.08.038 0301-4797/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Environmental Management 204 (2017) 82e91