[Infrasound: body's effects and hygienic regulation]

The paper analyzes and sums up technically originated infrasound (IS) hygienic problems. Trends for an increase in its role as an unfavourable factor of the industrial, transport, and residential environments are established. Comprehensive physiological, hygienic, and experimental studies revealed the pathogenetic features of IS. Involvement of the limbicoreticular complex, hypothalamus, and other subcortical structures into responses to higher factor levels on human beings stipulates a sharply prominent pathological discomfort as a manifestation of the infrasonic diencephalic hypothalamic syndrome with sensorisomatic and autonomic visceral symptoms. A conceptual pathogenetic model of IS exposure has been worked out. Main subjective and objective signs of and criteria for IS exposure have been defined, its ranking by human risk areas is given with the influencing factor parameters borne in mind. The biometry of biological effects on exposure to IS at 4 and Hz and at 130 dB and their changes in the vestibular and acoustic analyzers, as well as in the neurohumoral regulation system and other homeostatic parameters has revealed the priority of the whole body's responses.