EURO-ECO 2010 Hanover 2 - 3 Dezember 2010	Environmental, Engineering - Economic and Legal Aspects for Sustainable Living
	European Academy of Natural Sciences, Hanover European Scientific Society, Hanover University of Bremen, Bremen

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Aliphatic hydrocarbons are most commonly encountered hydrocarbons and are most often in contact with a human being. This is because the principal component of petroleum are alkanes. Consequently, the component which determines their effect is hexane. Hexane is a solvent widely used in production of synthetic materials, tyres, glues for shoe manufacturing, extracting vegetable oils, in textile, tanning and furniture manufacture. Experiments on animals showed that hexane affected different enzyme systems in lungs in various ways: atelectasis, pulmonary edema, altered monooxygenase system of liver, thymus and spleen atrophic changes, lymph glands abnormalities.

Thus, hexane is obviously a polytropic poison affecting different tissues of the organism. Analysis of the literature on effect of hexane on the organism shows that there is a lot of information about general influence of hexane while effect of hexane on respiratory system is insufficiently studied. Taking into account high toxin sensitivity of respiratory system, our scientific work seems very promising, this is why we occupy ourselves with this research.

Aerosol influence with hexane fumes was exerted in 200-liter Kurlyandskiy gas chambers on albino Wistar rats weighing from 170 to 210 grams. Xenobiotic influence lasted for 8 weeks, 4 hours every day, excluding weekends. During this period the air in the chamber was tested every 60 minutes according to established chemical procedure which allowed to maintain hexane concentration at the level of 1/20 LK_5O which corresponds to subacute experiment. The animals were divided into two groups: the 1^st one – intact rats, the animals of the second one were exposed to static aerosol influence of hexane. During the experiment we observed body weight time history. At the end of the experiment the experimental rats were immediately decapitated. Bronchial tubes, trachea and lungs were taken out to determine their morphological characteristics. Microscopic and morphometric studies of the preparations were carried out with computer microscopic videosystem “Quantimet 550 IW” possessing a built-in morphometric programmes package of the English manufacturer “Laica”. The findings were statistically processed with the programme Excel “Descriptive statistics” with application of t-Student criterion.

Microscopic study of trachea mucous tunic in subacute experiment revealed acute catarrhal desquamative tracheitis. Quite large areas of epithelium were desquamated. The remaining epithelium suffered from hydropic degeneration. As stereometric analysis showed, all the layers of trachea wall got thicker because of edema and swelling of mucous tunic plate stroma and unstriped muscle layer of trachea wall. There was vascular hyperemia and disturbed permeability of vascular walls which led to perivascular edema. Inflammatory cellular infiltration was of diffuse character and reached all the layers of trachea wall. In trachea lumen there was mucus, exfoliated epithelium in the form of sphacelous amorphous masses. As morphometric analysis showed, volume share of ciliated epithelium cells and goblet cells decreased. Quantity of ciliated cells in trachea of experimental group animals reduces dramatically in comparison to characteristics of control group animals. Quantity of goblet cells tended to decrease, too.

Thus, laboratory animals affected by aliphatic hydrocarbons containing fumes suffered from catarrhal desquamative tracheitis, as histological studies carried out on the animals’ trachea preparations showed.