Industrial Noise and its Effects on Hearing

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Industrial Noise and its Effects on Hearing

Audition plays many important roles in our daily lives. From sound, we can identify and locate an object. Also, spoken language and its auditory reception have become an extremely important means of communication. A deficit in the ability to hear have tremendous effects on a person physically and mentally. Hearing loss caused by occupational noise is one of our biggest industrial diseases. It is a disease that has been recognized since the Industrial Revolution. According to Sataloff and Sataloff (1987) about 35 million Americans suffer from hearing loss, and of those, eight million suffer from occupational hearing loss. Because of the sheer number of people and our neglect of the subject, almost every American may be affected directly or indirectly.

It has certainly been technologically possible for many years to eradicate the problem of occupational hearing loss, but a delay has been caused by legislative, economic, and political resistance. Also, because hearing loss does not impede your earning power as much as vision loss would, it has taken the back burner as far as industrial perceptual diseases are concerned. Because of the new laws on worker's compensation an estimated 20 billion dollars might have to be paid out to those inflicted, which would make it the number one environmental and medical-legal problem in the United States (Harris, 1979).

Exposure to excessive noise for a sufficiently long period of time can result in the destruction and eventual loss of the organ of Corti. Harris (1979) has divided the effects of industrial noise on hearing into three categories. The first is acoustic trauma, the immediate organic damage to the ear from excessive sound energy, i...

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National Board for Science and Technology, Dublin (Ireland). (1980). Noise and the environment. U.S. Department of Commerce Springfield, VA. (NTIS No. PB84-108638)

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (1988). Self-reported hearing loss among workers potentially exposed to industrial noise- United States. Journal of America Medical Association, 259(15), 2213-2217.

Sataloff, R. T., & Sataloff, J. (1987). Occupational Hearing Loss. New York: Marcel Dekker, INC.

Simpson, T., Stewart, M., & Blakley, B. (1995). Audiometric referral criteria for industrial hearing conservation programs. Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surgery, 121, 407-411.

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