This review in chronological order considers steps of the solution of the one of key issues of occupational medicine, namely - a hygienic assessment of working conditions at enterprises of gas-processing industry - the most steadily growing sector of economy, reliably providing the population’s needs and the national economy for fuel and energy resources. The intensity of the working process at these enterprises was shown to be often associated with the persistent exposure to various harmful factors of the occupational environment that in the complex promotes the formation of unfavorable functional states, a decline in the level of physical and mental health, productivity and efficiency of work. Industrial air environment in services workshop and compressor houses is often polluted with hydrogen sulphide, sulfur dioxide, mercaptans, methanol, saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbons, nitrogen and carbon oxides. The main cause of this pollution is a certain imperfection of the technological process and equipment, especially the lack of its tightness. The number of processes at a high temperature and elevated pressure in the presence of very aggressive reagents primarily, as hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide promotes the release of harmful substances into air environment. The possibility of their additive or synergistic impact on employees is not excluded because just in such industries there is seen a number of combinations of harmful substances enforcing the action of each other. There is made a conclusion that working conditions and environmental protection at the enterprises for the processing of natural gas and condensate with the high content of hydrogen sulfide and other corrosive components need for the further comprehensive hygienic assessment with the aim of the development of measures for the improvement of working conditions, preservation of workers’ health and environmental protection at all stages of production and processing of hydrocarbon raw materials in modern conditions. In preparing the review, the Scopus and Russian Information Scientific Center databases were used.

Introduction. Despite the unique measures being taken at the Astrakhan Gas Processing Plant for personnel protection, the harmful exposure to the staff is not eliminated completely yet. Examination of the immune system is one of the methods of laboratory control over the gas-processing workers’ health and the system of measures for hygienic normalization of the working conditions. Materials and methods. The present study describes the working environment and evaluates the state of the immune system in workers with the use of the standard unified methods and approaches. A Brüel & Kjear 1302 multi gas monitor and a Tsvet-550 gas chromatograph were used to indicate pollutants. Examination involved one hundred sixty workers and 81 person from the control group (donors of Astrakhan Regional Blood Transfusion Center). The immune system was evaluated using the System 9000 Plus hematological analyser, Cyto FLEX LX flow cytometer, UNICO 2100UV specrophotometer, and KFK-3-03-ZOMZ photometer Results. The established set of the main unfavourable production factors includes air pollution of the work area with sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon, hydrogen sulphide, saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbons, and unfavourable microclimatic conditions. Occupational hazards cause in employees changes in the immune status including leukocytosis, lymphocytosis, changes in the composition of the lymphocyte population and T lymphocyte subpopulation, a decrease in the immunoglobulin content, lysozyme activity and phagocytosis index. Limitations. The study took into account only the effect of occupational hazards on the deviation of the immune status of workers engaged in natural gas and condensate processing. Conclusion. The authors consider the recorded changes to be adaptive. It suggests the possibility of normalization of the workers’ immune system functions with adequate rehabilitation measures.

Introduction. The development of different ways of identifying hazard of substances, polluting the environment, that are alternative to routine methods for assessing health of different professional groups of people, as well as to tests on laboratory animals, has been assessed and summarized in a number of papers, and there is a growing volume of actual data on this issue. The analyzing pathogenic properties of microflora, isolated from polluted habitats or changed under the effect of pollutants, allows both assessing the risk of diseases with microbial etiology and identifying the influence of modifying factors on this process. Materials and methods. The research was performed on 150 cultures of Klebsiella pneumoniae, exposed to diethanolamine, phenol, sulfuric and nitric acids, taken at the level of their threshold limit value. The same cultures incubated without pollutants were used as a control group. Pathogenic factors were determined with the use of traditional methods, our modified methods (RNAase activity) and standard agents, kits and media. Results. The contact with all the pollutants resulted in a fair increase in adhesive, anti-Ig, lysozyme, anti-lysozyme and RNAase activities of microorganisms, their resistance to antibacterial action of blood serum, as well as to damaging action of lactoferrin. The bacteria increased their ability to synthesize a substance, immunologically similar to human lactoferrin. At the same time, there was a decrease in lipase activity, primarily referred to factors determining the bacterial ability to survive in the environment. Discussion. Therefore, the paper results can be presented as follows: being an independent and holistic section of modern microbiology, bacterial biochemistry unites the issues appeared to be far from each other - changes in factors of pathogenicity and persistence of microorganisms and technogenic changeability of the environment. Being quite urgent today, this problem may become aggravated in the course of further technological progress.

The study aimed to determine the effect of certain biochemical factors on the female reproductive function. Analysis showed that two biochemical factors classified as inflammatory markers have a significant difference in their concentrations in women with impaired fertility and those without fertility disorders. These are C-reactive protein (CRP) and lactoferrin (LF). It is reasonable to assume that these inflammatory markers are associated to some extent with the development of reproductive disorders due to possible formation of inhibin A/LF complexes, which may reduce the biological activity of inhibin A, in patients’ serum. The effect of CRP on inhibin A activity is most likely to be systemic and associated with the effect of CRP high concentrations on inhibin A function on the body level. In particular, it is possible that CRP has an effect on IL-1βsynthesis in ovarian follicles.

The study aimed at isolating a substance that is immunologically similar to human lactoferrin, hereinafter — microbial-derived lactoferrin (MdLF) isolated from K.pneumoniae liquid culture. Protein extraction started with isolation of ballast proteins in 2M ammonium sulphate (p.a.). Ion chromatography with cation-exchange agents was the basic method used for isolating MLF. Proteins from the isolated protein fractions were identified with AGID method. The isolated MLF is glucoprotein with the molecular mass of about 84,000, the agarose diffusion coefficient of 3.1 × 10–7 cm2 sec–1 and the relative electrophoretic mobility of 0.42. MLF is characterized by low hydrophobicity and elutes from phenylSepharose with 0.4 ammonium sulphate. Its isoelectric point equals to 9.2.