ORLEN Foundation Runs Free Health Screening Beside Its Gdansk Refinery Fenceline

ORLEN's Pomeranian foundation opened a two-day free health screening event on Saturday, August 22, 2026, at the Ziemia Zulawska primary school in Przejazdowo, in the municipality of Pruszcz Gdanski, the village ORLEN selected because it sits closest to its plant.

The programme, called Miasteczko Zdrowia, has screened more than 43 thousand people in Poland, according to Anita Cieslicka-Szczepaniak, ORLEN's spokesperson for local communities. It runs under the honorary patronage of Poland's health minister.

Visitors are offered 21 tests and specialist consultations at no cost, with no prior registration and no check of the PESEL identity number, according to Cieslicka-Szczepaniak. Removing the registration step matters: it converts a clinical offer into a walk-in one, which is what determines turnout at a school gymnasium over a weekend.

The site choice is the mechanism worth reading. ORLEN picked Przejazdowo mainly because the locality is the nearest neighbour to its facility, with the Rafineria Gdanska located not far away, on the Zulawy in Gdansk. Refiners carry permanent exposure to the households immediately outside the fenceline, and the foundation vehicle lets a downstream operator spend on those households without routing the cost through the refinery's own operating budget.

This is the second edition in Przejazdowo and the second in Pomerania. The programme began in Plock and has also been run in Wloclawek. That sequence tracks ORLEN's own industrial map rather than public health need as such, which is the tell of a neighbourhood risk management instrument rather than a national screening campaign.

Strategic partners on site include the fire service, the police, and an epidemiological centre explaining self-examination techniques. The regional sanitary inspectorate also attended. "We are here at the invitation of the ORLEN Foundation, Miasteczko Zdrowia," said Zbigniew Zawadzki, spokesperson for the Pomeranian State Provincial Sanitary Inspector, whose team brought phantoms and a UV lamp. Pulling in uniformed public services and a state inspectorate lends the event institutional weight that a corporate stand alone would not carry.

The event also hosts environmental exhibitors whose material touches the refiner's own product chain. Alicja Szczypta, chair of the board of the Fundacja Kota Morskiego, described protection against pollution by plastics, microplastics and mesoplastics as a key issue for the sea.

Piotr Bieniasz, representing the Ecofloral family initiative, showed objects made from coffee grounds, orange pressings, stale bread and pine needles. A cup made from coffee grounds can serve as a plant pot and feed the soil for six months by slowly releasing micro-elements, according to Bieniasz.

For a global readership tracking downstream operators, the structure rather than the scale is the point. Screening volumes in the tens of thousands are small against any national health system, but the spend is concentrated on the specific settlements that hold veto-adjacent influence over permits, expansions and complaint traffic at a refining site. The health ministry patronage and the presence of police, firefighters and the sanitary inspectorate convert a corporate weekend into a semi-public event, which is the cheapest form of goodwill a refiner can buy next door.

The cost side is not disclosed by the organisers, and the programme is presented as charitable activity of the ORLEN group carried out through the Fundacja ORLEN dla Pomorza. The measurable output stated by the company is the cumulative screening count of more than 43 thousand people.