Effects of Exposure to Organic Solvents and Noise on the Hearing Abilities of Shoe-Manufacturing Workers
Vol. 54, No. 6, pp. 437-442,
Dec. 2017
10.12772/TSE.2017.54.437
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Abstract
In this study, pure tone and speech hearing tests were conducted on 60 participants working in shoe-manufacturing factories in Busan in order to examine the effects of exposure to mixed organic solvents and noise on their hearing abilities. The control group was selected from the general public. The shoe-manufacturing workers and the participants selected from the general public represented the exposed and unexposed group, respectively. We observed statistically significant differences in the uncomfortable levels and speech recognition threshold levels between the participants of the exposed and
unexposed groups. These observations indicate that the discomfort index increases significantly due to continuous exposure to noise and mixed organic solvents. Furthermore, it was observed that exposure to noise and organic solvents had the same effect on the hearing abilities of the left and right ears. The results of this study were similar to those of earlier studies that showed that hearing loss caused by noise occurs mostly in the high frequency range (3,000−6,000 Hz), and changes most significantly at 4,000 Hz. Categorizing the participants
into grades of hearing loss revealed that 13.3% of the participants of the exposed
group exhibited a certain level of hearing loss. This was higher by approximately 8% than that observed in the unexposed group (5%), which can be attributed to long-term exposure of the exposed group to mixed organic solvents and noise.
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