Purpose:
Workers of cotton mills are at a higher risk for developing hearing loss because of risky high levels of noise environments. The most important effect is irreversible hearing loss due to damage to the sensory and neural organs of the ear. The study aimed to find the hearing loss rate among Baghdad Cotton mills.
Methods:
232 Cotton mill workers with a mean age of 40.1±5.6 years and a range of 28-50 years with male-to-female proportions (93.1% vs. 6.9%) participated in this cross-sectional study. They underwent pure tone audiometry at 0.5- 8 Khz and completed a questionnaire. Data were processed in SPSS using both descriptive and analytical methods, and the neural network approach was employed to identify key predictors.
Results:
The rate of Occupational Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (ONIHL) in cotton mill workers was 28.4% with M(SD)= 1.72(0.45) and 95% CI= 1.66, 1.77. There were highly significant associations between the increased age of cotton mill workers, (p<0.001), the longer working duration (p<0.001), the low educational level of cotton mills workers (p<0.001), a history of chronic diseases, and hearing loss (HL) (p=0.007), especially hypertension history (p=0.03) in cotton mills workers. No significant differences were noticed between cotton mill workers with and without HL regarding gender (p=0.37), smoking status (p=0.28), and smoking grades (p=0.34). Moreover, no significant effect of average working years was observed on the severity of left and right ears ONIHL (p>0.05).
Conclusion:
ONIHL is most common in a noisy workplace which is bluntly proportionate to the average working years. The use of hearing protection devices definite hearing conservation plan, and annually repeated audiometry should be made obligatory for the early detection and prevention of ONIHL to understand that it is permanent but preventable.