The Occupational Safety and Health Act is establishing limits for industrial noise exposure. The Act may also require physicians to evaluate audiograms and examine almost two million employees annually. Otolaryngologists must take special training and become certified to provide American industry with expertise in industrial hearing conservation.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗

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Intermittent exposure to noise: effects on hearing.

Most studies of the effects of noise upon hearing have dealt with continuous noise exposure. Previous reports on intermittent exposure to noise concluded that it causes less damage to hearing than does continuous exposure to noise of the same intensity. In this investigation, 12,000 workers were screened to find 295 subjects who met the strict criteria of the study. Most of the subjects were exposed to jackhammer noise at peak levels of 118 dBA. Intermittent exposure to intense noise results in very severe loss in high frequencies but relatively little or no hearing loss in the lower frequencies even after many years of exposure. This differs substantially from the effects of continuous exposure to noise of the same intensity. It remains to be determined whether this pattern of hearing results from intermittent exposure to all sorts of noise or only from the kinds of sources investigated in this study.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Audiologic testing: an overview for occupational physicians.

This chapter summarizes the audiologic tests likely to be encountered by occupational physicians caring for workers with hearing loss complaints. These include audiometric tests, electrocochleography, evoked-response audiometry, and tests designed to examine for central nervous system damage.

Audiology↗