Investigation of Hearing Loss and its Related Factors in Kerman Truck Drivers

Noise is the third most dangerous pollutant in Metropolises and is one of the most important risk factors in the transportation industry. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating truck drivers hearing loss and its effective factors. This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2011 in Kerman City on 150 professional truck drivers who had a dossier at the center of screening occupational diseases, and were chosen by stratified random sampling. Information was collected by a checklist including age, marital status, military services status, smoking status and audiometry done in the current year and were analyzed by using SPSS 18 using correlation, ANOVA, Paired t-test, McNemar's test and Adjusted Linear Regression. The mean age of participants was 43.0±10.56 and in all frequencies a significant difference was found between the hearing threshold of drivers with different work experiences, and hearing loss increased with increase in work experience. Hearing loss increased significantly in all frequencies with age increase as well. Hearing loss in frequencies more than 2000 H was significantly more in the left ear than the right. Although age increase is an important factor in hearing loss, but alone, it does not justify the asymmetric hearing loss at the quantities measured in the drivers in this study. It appears that driving due to constant exposure to noise can lead to hearing loss in drivers.