Occupational Hearing Loss
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Occupational Hearing Loss
Occupational hearing loss (OHL) is hearing loss that occurs as a result of occupational hazards, such as excessive noise and ototoxic chemicals. Noise is a common workplace hazard, and recognized as the risk factor for noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus but it is not the only risk factor that can result in a work-related hearing loss. Also, noise-induced hearing loss can result from exposures that are not restricted to the occupational setting. OHL is a prevalent occupational concern in various work environments worldwide. In the United States, organizations such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) work with employers and workers to reduce or eliminate occupational hearing hazards through a hierarchy of hazard controls. OHL is one of the most common work-related illness in the United States. Occupational hearing hazards include indus ...
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Prevalence Of Hearing Loss By Time Period And Industry Sector, 1981 - 2010 For 1,816,812 Workers
In epidemiology, prevalence is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seatbelt use) at a specific time. It is derived by comparing the number of people found to have the condition with the total number of people studied and is usually expressed as a fraction, a percentage, or the number of cases per 10,000 or 100,000 people. Prevalence is most often used in questionnaire studies. Difference between prevalence and incidence Prevalence is the number of disease cases ''present ''in a particular population at a given time, whereas incidence (epidemiology), incidence is the number of new cases that ''develop '' during a specified time period. Prevalence answers "How many people have this disease right now?" or "How many people have had this disease during this time period?". Incidence answers "How many people acquired the disease [during a specified time period]?". However, mathemat ...
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Personal Protective Equipment
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment designed to protect the wearer's body from injury or infection. The hazards addressed by protective equipment include physical, electrical, heat, chemicals, biological hazard, biohazards, and Atmospheric particulate matter, airborne particulate matter. Protective equipment may be worn for job-related occupational safety and health purposes, as well as for sports and other recreation, recreational activities. ''Protective clothing'' is applied to traditional categories of clothing, and ''protective gear'' applies to items such as pads, guards, shields, or masks, and others. PPE suits can be similar in appearance to a cleanroom suit. The purpose of personal protective equipment is to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering controls and administrative controls are not feasible or effective to reduce these risks to acceptable levels. PPE is needed when there a ...
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Permissible Exposure Limit
The permissible exposure limit (PEL or OSHA PEL) is a legal limit in the United States for exposure of an employee to a chemical substance or physical agent such as high level noise. Permissible exposure limits are established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Most of OSHA's PELs were issued shortly after adoption of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act in 1970. For chemicals, the chemical regulation is usually expressed in parts per million (ppm), or sometimes in milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3). Units of measure for physical agents such as noise are specific to the agent. A PEL is usually given as a time-weighted average (TWA), although some are short-term exposure limits (STEL) or ceiling limits. A TWA is the average exposure over a specified period, usually a nominal eight hours. This means that, for limited periods, a worker may be exposed to concentration excursions higher than the PEL, so long as the TWA is not exceeded and any applicab ...
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Ringing In The Ears
Tinnitus is the perception of sound when no corresponding external sound is present. Nearly everyone experiences a faint "normal tinnitus" in a completely quiet room; but it is of concern only if it is bothersome, interferes with normal hearing, or is associated with other problems. While often described as a ringing, it may also sound like a clicking, buzzing, hissing or roaring. It may be soft or loud, low- or high-Pitch (music), pitched, and may seem to come from one or both ears or from the head itself. In some people, it may interfere with concentration, and in some cases is associated with anxiety and Depression (mood), depression. Tinnitus is usually associated with a degree of hearing loss and decreased comprehension of speech in noisy environments. It is common, affecting about 10–15% of people. Most, however, tolerate it well, and it is a significant problem in only 1–2% of all people. It can trigger a fight-or-flight response, as the brain may perceive it as dan ...
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Logarithmic Scale
A logarithmic scale (or log scale) is a way of displaying numerical data over a very wide range of values in a compact way—typically the largest numbers in the data are hundreds or even thousands of times larger than the smallest numbers. Such a scale is nonlinear: the numbers 10 and 20, and 60 and 70, are not the same distance apart on a log scale. Rather, the numbers 10 and 100, and 60 and 600 are equally spaced. Thus moving a unit of distance along the scale means the number has been ''multiplied'' by 10 (or some other fixed factor). Often exponential growth curves are displayed on a log scale, otherwise they would increase too quickly to fit within a small graph. Another way to think about it is that the ''number of digits'' of the data grows at a constant rate. For example, the numbers 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are equally spaced on a log scale, because their numbers of digits is going up by 1 each time: 2, 3, 4, and 5 digits. In this way, adding two digits ''multiplies'' the ...
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Decibel
The decibel (symbol: dB) is a relative unit of measurement equal to one tenth of a bel (B). It expresses the ratio of two values of a power or root-power quantity on a logarithmic scale. Two signals whose levels differ by one decibel have a power ratio of 101/10 (approximately ) or root-power ratio of 10 (approximately ). The unit expresses a relative change or an absolute value. In the latter case, the numeric value expresses the ratio of a value to a fixed reference value; when used in this way, the unit symbol is often suffixed with letter codes that indicate the reference value. For example, for the reference value of 1 volt, a common suffix is " V" (e.g., "20 dBV"). Two principal types of scaling of the decibel are in common use. When expressing a power ratio, it is defined as ten times the logarithm in base 10. That is, a change in ''power'' by a factor of 10 corresponds to a 10 dB change in level. When expressing root-power quantities, a change in ''ampl ...
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Vibration
Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The word comes from Latin ''vibrationem'' ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations may be periodic function, periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum—or random, such as the movement of a tire on a gravel road. Vibration can be desirable: for example, the motion of a tuning fork, the Reed (music), reed in a woodwind instrument or harmonica, a mobile phone, or the cone of a loudspeaker. In many cases, however, vibration is undesirable, wasting energy and creating unwanted sound. For example, the vibrational motions of engines, electric motors, or any Machine, mechanical device in operation are typically unwanted. Such vibrations could be caused by Engine balance, imbalances in the rotating parts, uneven friction, or the meshing of gear teeth. Careful designs usually minimize unwanted vibrations. The studies of sound and vibration are closely related. Sound, or pressure waves, are ge ...
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Occupational Illness
An occupational disease is any chronic ailment that occurs as a result of work or occupational activity. It is an aspect of occupational safety and health. An occupational disease is typically identified when it is shown that it is more prevalent in a given body of workers than in the general population, or in other worker populations. The first such disease to be recognised, squamous-cell carcinoma of the scrotum, was identified in chimney sweep boys by Sir Percival Pott in 1775. Occupational hazards that are of a traumatic nature (such as falls by roofers) are not considered to be occupational diseases. Under the law of workers' compensation in many jurisdictions, there is a presumption that specific disease are caused by the worker being in the work environment and the burden is on the employer or insurer to show that the disease came about from another cause. Diseases compensated by national workers compensation authorities are often termed occupational diseases. However, m ...
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Head Injury
A head injury is any injury that results in trauma to the skull or brain. The terms ''traumatic brain injury'' and ''head injury'' are often used interchangeably in the medical literature. Because head injuries cover such a broad scope of injuries, there are many causes—including accidents, falls, physical assault, or traffic accidents—that can cause head injuries. The number of new cases is 1.7 million in the United States each year, with about 3% of these incidents leading to death. Adults have head injuries more frequently than any age group resulting from falls, motor vehicle crashes, colliding or being struck by an object, or assaults. Children, however, may experience head injuries from accidental falls or intentional causes (such as being struck or shaken) leading to hospitalization. Acquired brain injury (ABI) is a term used to differentiate brain injuries occurring after birth from injury, from a genetic disorder, or from a congenital disorder. Unlike a broken bon ...
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Barotrauma
Barotrauma is physical damage to body tissues caused by a difference in pressure between a gas space inside, or contact with, the body and the surrounding gas or liquid. The initial damage is usually due to over-stretching the tissues in tension or shear, either directly by an expansion of the gas in the closed space or by pressure difference hydrostatically transmitted through the tissue. Tissue rupture may be complicated by the introduction of gas into the local tissue or circulation through the initial trauma site, which can cause blockage of circulation at distant sites or interfere with the normal function of an organ by its presence. Barotrauma generally manifests as sinus or middle ear effects, lung overpressure injuries and injuries resulting from external squeezes. Decompression sickness is indirectly caused by ambient pressure reduction, and tissue damage is caused directly and indirectly by gas bubbles. However, these bubbles form out of supersaturated solution from ...
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Workplace
A workplace is a location where someone Work (human activity), works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a Small office/home office, home office to a large office building or factory. For Industrial society, industrialized societies, the workplace is one of the most important social spaces other than the home, constituting "a central concept for several entities: the worker and [their] family, the employing organization, the customers of the organization, and the society as a whole". The development of new communication technologies has led to the development of the virtual workplace and remote work. Workplace issues * Sexual harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances or conduct of a sexual nature which unreasonably interferes with the performance of a person's job or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. * Kiss up kick down * Toxic workplace * Workplace aggression: A specific type of aggression that occurs ...
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Conductive Hearing Loss
Conductive hearing loss (CHL) occurs when there is a problem transferring sound waves anywhere along the pathway through the outer ear, tympanic membrane (eardrum), or middle ear ( ossicles). If a conductive hearing loss occurs in conjunction with a sensorineural hearing loss, it is referred to as a mixed hearing loss. Depending upon the severity and nature of the conductive loss, this type of hearing impairment can often be treated with surgical intervention or pharmaceuticals to partially or, in some cases, fully restore hearing acuity to within normal range. However, cases of permanent or chronic conductive hearing loss may require other treatment modalities such as hearing aid devices to improve detection of sound and speech perception. Causes Common causes of conductive hearing loss include: External ear * Cerumen (earwax) or foreign body in the external auditory canal * Otitis externa, infection or irritation of the outer ear * Exostoses, abnormal growth of bone withi ...
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