Abstract: Objective
To investigate the feasibility of kurtosis in evaluating high frequency hearing loss (HFHL) caused by
Methods -
complex noise. A total of 273 noise exposed workers in three metal tool manufacturing enterprises were chosen as
studysubjectsusingajudgementsamplingmethod.Thenoiseintensityandkurtosisintheworkplacewasmeasured.Cumulative
noiseexposure(CNE)wascalculatedfromnoiseintensityandworkingageandtheCNEwasadjustedusingkurtosis(CNE′).CNEResultsandCNE′wereusedtoevaluatetheriskofHFHL,andtheeffectsofthetwomethodswerecompared.ThemedianandMPP25,75percentiles[(25,75)]ofnoiseexposedintensityinthestudysubjectswas91.9(88.3,97.3)dB(A),andtheincidenceofMPPnoiseexposureexceededthenationaloccupationalexposurelimitaccountedfor81.0%.The(25,75)ofthekurtosiswas8.3
(7.9, 27.3), and kurtosis>4.0 accounted for 100.0%. The detection rate of HFHL was 39.6% (108/273). The detection rate of
P - -
HFHL increased with the increase of CNE and CNE′ (all <0.01). The goodness of fit of CNE′ in assessing the risk of HFHL
Conclusion
detectionwasbetterthanthatofCNE(coefficientsofdeterminationwere0.91and0.83,respectively). Kurtosiscan
beusedasanauxiliaryparametertoadjusttheCNEandthenappliedtoevaluatetheriskofHFHLcausedbycomplexnoise.Keywords:Hearingloss;Noise;Strength;Kurtosis;Cumulativenoiseexposure;Riskassessment