Hearing impairment and contributing factors among fertilizer factory workers

• Main Authors: Mohammad Saffree Jeffree, Noorhassim Ismail, Khamsiah Awang Lukman
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: R Medicine (General)
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/24943/1/Hearing%20impairment%20and%20contributing%20factors%20among%20fertilizer%20factory%20workers.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/24943/7/Hearing%20impairment%20and%20contributing%20factors%20among%20fertilizer%20factory%20workers1.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/24943/; https://doi.org/10.1539/joh.16-0043-OA
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sabah

Introduction Hearing impairment remains the main occupational health problem in the manufacturing industry, and its contributing factors have not been well controlled. Methods Unmatched case control and comparative studies were carried out among fertilizer factory workers in Sarawak with the aim of determining contributing factors for hearing impairment. Respondents consisted of 49 cases that were diagnosed from 2005 to 2008 with 98 controls from the same work places. Chisquare test and Mann‐Whitney test were used in a univariate analysis to determine the association between hearing impairment and the contributing risks being studied. Results The results of the univariate analysis showed that hearing impairment was signicantly (p < 0.05) associated with older age, lower education level, high smoking dose, high occupational daily noise dose, longer duration of service, infrequent used of hearing protection device (HPD), and low perception of sound on HPD usage. Multivariate logistic regression of hearing impairment after controlling for age found the following ve variables: occupational daily noise dose �50% (OR 3.48, 95% CI 1.36‐8.89), �15 years of services (OR 2.92, 95% CI 1.16‐7.33), infrequent use of HPD (OR 2.79, 95% CI 1.15‐6.77), low perception of sound on HPD (POR 2.77, 95% CI 1.09‐6.97), and smoking more than 20 packs per year (OR 4.71, 95% CI 1.13‐19.68).