Objective:

To check whether sedentary workers in the chemical sector, who comply with the WHO’s minimum exercise recommendations, have lower BMI and cholesterol and triglyceride levels than those who do not comply with these recommendations.

Material and methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study on 184 male employees. The STROBE recommendations were followed. In addition to the usual descriptive tests, we used the Chi-Squared Independence Test and the Student T test, as well as a multivariate method, the CHAID Segmentation (Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection).

Results:

A highly significant relationship (p=0.004) was observed between workers who exercised in compliance with the WHO minimum requirements and normal BMI. If this minimum was not reached, the relation, although lower, was still significant (p=0.041). Significance was found between normal BMI and normal cholesterol and triglycerides (p=0.034 and p=0.033 respectively).

Conclusions:

The main factor predicting BMI in this group is that physical activity meets the minimum criteria recommended by the WHO, regardless of whether workers are active or sedentary.

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