Congenital malformations and the environment.

The aim of the work was to search for the correlation between the environmental pollution and the ratio of congenital malformations found in the population of 54,493 newborn infants of three Silesian towns: Bielsko-Biała (situated in the mountains, close to a recreation part of the country), Bytom (situated in the center of an old industrial district, where industry is responsible for very high environmental pollution), and Tarnowskie Góry (situated close to vast woodlands, where very high environmental concentration of heavy metals is caused by an outdated, big zinc plant). In spite of big differences of environmental pollution indices between the three towns, the percentage of major congenital malformations diagnosed within the first three days of extrauterine life was almost identical (1.12% in Bielsko-Biała, 1.