Analysis on characteristics of hearing loss in occupational noise-exposed workers in automotive manufacturing industry

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the characteristics of hearing loss in occupational noise-exposed workers in automotive manufacturing industry. Methods: According to Technical Specifications for Occupational Health Surveillance (GBZ188-2014) , 530 noise-exposed workers were examined for health and pure tone audiometry during January to June, 2017, and the data were collected for analysis. Poisson regression analysis was used to analysis the relationship between work age and hearing loss. Results: After correction of age and gender, pure-tone threshold of 500, 1 000, 2 000, 3 000, 4 000, 6 000 of the noise-exposed workers in the <3 year-exposure group were 20.15±3.60, 18.80±3.43, 18.54±3.38, 19.10±4.03, 20.32±6.79, 23.48±8.92 dB (A) ; the values in the 3-10 year-exposure group were 20.96±5.38, 19.25±4.76, 19.22±5.29, 20.17±7.50, 21.36±8.88, 25.39±11.60 dB (A) ; the values in the >10 year-exposure group were 20.18±3.67, 18.34±3.60, 18.36±4.25, 18.49±4.41, 20.32±9.24, 22.50±9.57 dB (A) . Poisson regression analysis showed that the relative risk (RR) of hearing loss of the noise-exposed workers compared with the noise-free workers was 4.38 (P<0.05) . Conclusion: The noise-exposed workers in automotive manufacturing industry revealed hearing loss, which was associated with their actual working age of noise exposure.