Prevalência de perda auditiva induzida por ruído em empresa metalúrgica

Maximiliano Ribeiro Guerra,Márcio José Martins Alves,Maria Teresa Bustamante-Teixeira,Paulo Maurício Campanha Lourenço

doi:10.1590/s0034-89102005000200015

Maximiliano Ribeiro Guerra, Márcio José Martins Alves + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/s0034-89102005000200015

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Abstract

To analyze the prevalence of cases suggestive of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) among metalworkers who were potentially exposed to occupational noise (from 83 to 102 dB). A cross-sectional study was carried out in a metalworking company providing services in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Clinical and occupational data on 182 workers who were active between November 2001 and March 2002 were obtained from the company's Hearing Conservation Program and analyzed. In order to characterize the noise exposure status within the work environment, the acoustic classifications from the operating units of the client companies were used, due to difficulty in quantification at an individual level. Associations between these cases and variables such as age, length of service in the company, length of exposure to occupational noise and degree of use of individual protection equipment were tested by means of prevalence ratios and logistic regression analysis. The prevalence of cases suggestive of NIHL was 15.9% and significant associations (p<0.05) were identified from multivariate analysis between these cases and the variables of age and degree of use of individual protection equipment. The results found contribute towards better understanding of the behavior of some of the main characteristics of NIHL, in a particular situation of the organizing of work that is relatively common in the Brazilian industrial context.

Highlights

Work-related hearing loss, and noiseinduced hearing loss (NIHL), is a highly prevalent occupational illness in industrialized countries, and it is prominent as one of the most prevalent health hazards for workers in Brazilian industry.[4]
Because of the difficulty found within the Hearing Conservation Program for quantifying the individual level of exposure to noise at each work post, only the acoustic classifications of the operating units of the client companies were utilized for characterizing the status of noise exposure within the working environwww.fsp.usp.br/rsp ment
The distribution of cases suggestive of NIHL presented significantly increasing prevalence (p

Summary

Introduction

Work-related hearing loss, and noiseinduced hearing loss (NIHL), is a highly prevalent occupational illness in industrialized countries, and it is prominent as one of the most prevalent health hazards for workers in Brazilian industry.[4] It is characterized by gradual reduction in auditory acuity, generally over a period of six to ten years of exposure to high levels of sound pressure.[11] It is always neurosensory in nature and irreversible, starting with the loss of high audiometric frequencies.*. The estimates of the prevalence of this illness among the different categories of workers in Brazil are basically made by means of epidemiological studies.[1,7,9,10,12,14,15]

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