Comparison of airway resistance of inhabitants of two distinctly different polluted areas.

To assess the influence of noxious ecological factors caused by air, water and soil pollution, multidisciplinary medical examination of inhabitants of villages situated in the Protective Zone of the Nowa Huta Steel Mill Plant was conducted. Tokarnia, a village about 40 km south-west of Cracow, commonly believed to have favorable environmental conditions, provided a background for the comparison. The aim of this study was to compare respiratory resistance of people living in these two areas. Mean values of Raw were higher in all groups of inhabitants of the Zone. The differences between arithmetic means of this parameter in groups of boys, girls, women and men were statistically significant.