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Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea

Occupational noise is known to be one of the most hazardous risk factors, frequently exceeding the exposure limit thus causing hearing loss and other health outcomes among many field workers in various industries and workplaces. This study aims to characterize the levels of occupational noise exposu...

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Autores principales: Shin, Jaewoo, Lee, Seokwon, Lee, Kyoungho, Kim, Hyunwook
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8393720/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34444596
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168847
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author Shin, Jaewoo
Lee, Seokwon
Lee, Kyoungho
Kim, Hyunwook
author_facet Shin, Jaewoo
Lee, Seokwon
Lee, Kyoungho
Kim, Hyunwook
author_sort Shin, Jaewoo
collection PubMed
description Occupational noise is known to be one of the most hazardous risk factors, frequently exceeding the exposure limit thus causing hearing loss and other health outcomes among many field workers in various industries and workplaces. This study aims to characterize the levels of occupational noise exposure during the daily working hours and break periods (sampling preparation and lunch break), identify work-related characteristics affecting the noise exposure levels when including or excluding the break periods and finally determine the most effective approach for occupational noise exposure assessment by using the Korean and U.S. OSHA’s guidelines. A total of 1575 workers employed by a large shipbuilding company participated in this study, and the historical exposure datasets of noise dosimeters, collected from 2016 to 2018, were classified by characteristics. A threshold level (TL) for the noise dosimeter was set as a value of 80 dBA during the break periods, including the preparation time for sampling instruments and one hour for the lunch break. The shipbuilding workers were exposed to high levels of occupational noise during the break periods, especially for those working in heating, grinding, and power processes in the painting-related departments. Out of 1575 samples, most cases were related to the preparation time (N = 1432, 90.9%) and lunch break (N = 1359, 86.9%). During the break time, the levels of noise exposure were measured depending on task-specific characteristics. When including the break time, the noise levels increased by approximately 1 dBA during the break, combining 0.8 dBA in the lunch hours and 0.2 dBA for the preparation of the sampling instrument. When excluding the break time, the levels of noise exposure collected using a Korean Occupational Safety and Health Administration (KOSHA) guide tended to be underestimated compared to those using the U.S. OSHA method. When including the break times, the proportion of noise exposure levels exceeding the compliance exposure limit declined from 37.9% to 34.5%, indicating that the break times might affect the decrease in the noise exposure levels. Taken together, shipbuilding workers could possibly be exposed to much greater amounts of noise exposure during break times in the shipbuilding processes, and the noise exposure levels in the department of painting were high. Therefore, it is recommended that industrial hygienists collect exposure monitoring data of occupational noise one hour after their job tasks begin and then consecutively monitor the noise exposure levels for at least 6 h including the break periods for each day.
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spelling pubmed-83937202021-08-28 Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea Shin, Jaewoo Lee, Seokwon Lee, Kyoungho Kim, Hyunwook Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Occupational noise is known to be one of the most hazardous risk factors, frequently exceeding the exposure limit thus causing hearing loss and other health outcomes among many field workers in various industries and workplaces. This study aims to characterize the levels of occupational noise exposure during the daily working hours and break periods (sampling preparation and lunch break), identify work-related characteristics affecting the noise exposure levels when including or excluding the break periods and finally determine the most effective approach for occupational noise exposure assessment by using the Korean and U.S. OSHA’s guidelines. A total of 1575 workers employed by a large shipbuilding company participated in this study, and the historical exposure datasets of noise dosimeters, collected from 2016 to 2018, were classified by characteristics. A threshold level (TL) for the noise dosimeter was set as a value of 80 dBA during the break periods, including the preparation time for sampling instruments and one hour for the lunch break. The shipbuilding workers were exposed to high levels of occupational noise during the break periods, especially for those working in heating, grinding, and power processes in the painting-related departments. Out of 1575 samples, most cases were related to the preparation time (N = 1432, 90.9%) and lunch break (N = 1359, 86.9%). During the break time, the levels of noise exposure were measured depending on task-specific characteristics. When including the break time, the noise levels increased by approximately 1 dBA during the break, combining 0.8 dBA in the lunch hours and 0.2 dBA for the preparation of the sampling instrument. When excluding the break time, the levels of noise exposure collected using a Korean Occupational Safety and Health Administration (KOSHA) guide tended to be underestimated compared to those using the U.S. OSHA method. When including the break times, the proportion of noise exposure levels exceeding the compliance exposure limit declined from 37.9% to 34.5%, indicating that the break times might affect the decrease in the noise exposure levels. Taken together, shipbuilding workers could possibly be exposed to much greater amounts of noise exposure during break times in the shipbuilding processes, and the noise exposure levels in the department of painting were high. Therefore, it is recommended that industrial hygienists collect exposure monitoring data of occupational noise one hour after their job tasks begin and then consecutively monitor the noise exposure levels for at least 6 h including the break periods for each day. MDPI 2021-08-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8393720/ /pubmed/34444596 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168847 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Shin, Jaewoo
Lee, Seokwon
Lee, Kyoungho
Kim, Hyunwook
Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea
title Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea
title_full Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea
title_fullStr Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea
title_full_unstemmed Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea
title_short Effect of Unmeasured Time Hours on Occupational Noise Exposure Assessment in the Shipbuilding Process in Korea
title_sort effect of unmeasured time hours on occupational noise exposure assessment in the shipbuilding process in korea
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8393720/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34444596
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168847
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