Over the period 1980-1990, 2024 workers in ceramic plants in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy were evaluated for exposure to noise and hearing loss. Data collected by the National Health Service Local of Occupational and Preventive Medicine Units were used. In a relatively young population (34.8 years mean age, 8.98 years s.d.) exposed for not too long to > 90 dBA noise levels (87.2 for less than 4 years) a statistically significant effect of exposure was found only on the audiometric frequency of 6 kHz (95% confidence interval for mean hearing loss for 1 year exposure to > 90 dBA: 0.05-0.72 dB). An initial isolated loss at the audiometric frequency of 6 kHz was found to be significantly associated with (was a prognostic indicator of) a subsequent impairment at 4 kHz.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[The determination of the criteria for selecting and using personal means of acoustic protection].

The most frequent occupational disease in Italy is noise-induced hearing loss. Not only is this disease invalidating and irreversible, it also involves extremely high direct and indirect costs for both the injured worker and the employer. Appropriate preventive measures are therefore essential and include personal protection devices. Recent Italian legislation (DL 277 15/8/91) assigns an important role to personal acoustic protection devices, raising, in certain situations, serious problems in terms of fitness for specific jobs. On the basis of an analysis of the characteristics of the various types of hearing protection aids, including efficacy, capacity of attenuation, influence on intelligibility of speech and perception of danger signals, guidelines are supplied for their best possible use.

Auditory Perception↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Validation of the Italian version of the Kjellberg and Iwanowski's Mood Scale].

Two questionnaires were administered to evaluate stress risk factors in 1652 employees of the Milan Town Council (772 Social Service personnel and 880 administrative staff). The study was focused on cardiovascular diseases. The Mopsy questionnaire is a selection of scales selected by the World Health Organization for international multicenter studies on cardiovascular morbidity, while the Mood Scale of Kjellberg & Iwanowski (1989) is a brief scale translated from Swedish used to measure "actual" stress and arousal state in neurotoxicology. The aim of the present study was to validate the Italian version of the Mood Scale for its possible use in health surveillance and research on stress and arousal changes at work. Appropriate statistical data analyses were applied to study the construct validity (factor analysis), concurrent validity (correlations with the Mopsy scale) and internal consistency (Cronbach alpha). The data confirm the Swedish results on the Mood Scale factor analysis. A good face and construct validity and a good internal consistency were observed. Nevertheless, the Mood Scale does not allow collection of demographic, anamnestic and personal data as does the Mopsy questionnaire.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Auditory thresholds in young Italians from 18-19 years of age].

The aim of the study was to assess the state of hearing levels in young Italian subjects via an epidemiological study, and also, by means of a questionnaire, to assess the attitude of young people to music, how they listen to music and how they perceive the risk of noise-induced hearing damage. The sample studied consisted of 391 youths undergoing their first medical examination for military service. The hearing threshold was assessed by means of a semiclinical tonal audiometry with sound-proof earphones calibrated to ISO Standard 389 following the method of ISO Standard 6189. At the end of the study 315 youths were judged eligible for the study, 81% of whom lived in the city of Milan. 63% said they went to a discotheque 1-4 times a week and 3% said they listened to music with earphones at maximum volume. These conditions are considered to be potentially dangerous for hearing since among youths leaving discotheques disorders have been observed that are indicative of hearing fatigue: lowering of the hearing level 7%, buzzing in the ears 37%, sense of muffled sound 12%. In the group studied, environmental noise was a factor of disturbance for sleep (13%), for study and reading (43%), listening to the radio, to music and watching TV (29%). Only 7 youths said their hearing was "not normal", but the thresholds were all higher than audiometric zero, which are clearly worse than the values observed in similar studies reported in the literature. This study reports the mean values, SD, minimum and maximum and centile values of the distribution of hearing thresholds, separately for right and left ears. A comparison was made between the hearing in the group least exposed: a significant difference was observed only for the right ear while for the left ear there was only a tendency. The authors conclude that hearing in young people to-day is worse than in the past, whatever be the causes, and that due account should be taken of this state of affairs, by encouraging prevention programmes for noise-induce hearing loss at all levels and on every possible occasion.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Model for integrated territorial structuralization of the preventive industrial medicine].

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Humans↗