Hearing loss and systolic blood pressure level among a sample of agricultural workers

ABSTRACT

High noise levels are a feature of several work environments.The least of these work environments is the agricultural one. In this study, a random sample of 58 male agricultural workers exposed to railway traffic noise were examined and compared with another 23 male agricultural workers as controls.Theexposedgroupshowed significant differences in hearing and systolic blood pressure levels from the control group. These differences were attributed to noise exposure as the two groups of workers were similar in relevant factors otherwise. The results of the study including audiometry were analyzed and discussed and some recommendations were also mentioned