Physical fitness and CHD risk factors in operators and managers of nuclear and thermal power plants situated in environmentally different regions of the Czech Republic.

Nuclear and thermal power plants are seen as one of the threats to human health. Most investigations explore the potential hazards of radiation and the potential impact of a polluted environment. Less attention is being paid to the human factor, i.e. to the people who actually are directly involved in the generation of electrical power and whose sudden collapse could result in a disaster. In this paper dealing with the prevention of CHD we submit, in a condensed form, the results of our long-term testing of operators and managers from one nuclear and two thermal power plants, located in totally dissimilar regions of the Czech Republic. In our investigations, which are still going on, we are using a whole battery of methods--case history, anthropological, clinical and functional tests. Our test subjects are middle-aged men, an age group most prone to CHD. The most favourable results of the vast majority of tests were obtained at the nuclear power plant in southern Moravia, while the most adverse ones--with respect to the danger of CHD--in the men from the thermal power plant in Prague. For the most part these results, in the light of a thorough analysis of the case history, anthropological, clinical, functional and biochemical investigations of these middle-aged men, should be seen as the cumulative effect of both their way of life (locomotor activities, nutrition) and the environment, in which they live. The men working at the nuclear power plant live in the least polluted environment. People's way of life may to some extent be influenced and some preventive steps along these lines have already been taken.