[Adolescents' physical development in a poor environmental area]

Physical and sexual developments were determined in 285 schoolchildren aged 12 to 17 years from the town of Karabash, an area of ecological ill-being in the environmental levels of heavy metal salts. The atmospheric air pollution was in parallel monitored at route observational stations. It was found that 39% of the schoolchildren had disharmonic physical development; of them a fourth had lower body weight and decreased chest circumference with normal growth indices. The girls were observed to have a high frequency of a microsomatotype of harmonic physical development and disharmonic physical development mainly at the expense of underweight (52.9% of all the disharmonically developed girls) as compared with the boys. There was a preponderance of female adolescents with sexual retardation. In the population of Karabash girls, the mean age at menarche was 12 years and 9 months +/- 1.5 months.