Monitoring the State of the Immune System of Persons Working in the Potassium Salt Industry

The immune status of basically healthy personnel of OAO Uralkalii and OAO Sil'vinit was studied for three years (1998–2000) to assess the effect of the workplace environment on the parameters of the immune system. All probands were divided into groups depending on their exposure to salts or halite waste. Annual examination did not reveal any statistically significant differences between the parameters of immunograms in the groups studied. The parameters of the humoral component of the immune system of potassium-industry workers manifested a stable tendency toward normalization, irrespective of whether or not these persons were exposed to salts, and the annual contents of T and B lymphocytes and phagocytizing cells were stable within the regional standards.     

A normative model of balanced nature management

The risk of erroneous regulation in multilevel normative environmental chains, at the federal, regional, and lower levels, down to the corporate one, has been studied. This risk has been demonstrated to increase unacceptably rapidly in the framework of the existing system of “unconditional acceptance” of normative standards. To mend the situation, it is necessary to use the “conditional acceptance” model by regarding post hoc decisions made at higher levels as a priori ones at the next (lower) levels. A strategy of environmentally and economically balanced corporate regulation of nature management through minimization of the losses resulting from both excessive caution and breaching the existing regulations has been proposed. This system, combined with the European approach to nature conservation, requires that the “riskless” regulation should be abandoned and is expected to improve the parameters of nature management quality by three to four orders of magnitude.     

Assessment of the Immune Status of Women Working in the Potassium Salt Industry and Their Children

The state of the immune system was studied in the women working at the OAO Uralkalii (Berezniki) and OAO Sil'vinit (Solikamsk), where they were permanently exposed to salts and halite waste, and their children born after at least three years of such exposure. The control group consisted of women who had no occupational contact with salts and halite wastes and of their children. No significant differences between the differential leukocyte counts and immunograms of the women working at the OAO Uralkalii and OAO Sil'vinit and their children were found. The main parameters of the immune system of women and their children both in the first and second groups were within the norm.