Noise and Heat Exposure Of Glass Fiber Plant Workers

• Main Authors: Yung-Hua Chiu, 邱勇樺
• Other Authors: Ming-Chi Wei
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47kh4n

碩士 === 嘉南藥理科技大學 === 產業安全衛生與防災研究所 === 97 === Exposure to excessive noise and heat is commonly encountered in a great varierty of industrial workplaces and can be a hazard to worker''s safety and health. Besides workers’ hearing loss, occupational noise exposure also may result in annoyance, quality of sleep, hinder conversation, low work efficiency, insomnia, headache, cardiovascular disease, dizzy and immunological abnormality. Additional, occupational heat exposure may cause fatigue and heat-related illness, make more mistakes, and have more accidents. The objective of this study is to evaluate the hearing threshold shift due to a comination of several factors such as heat stress, workload and noise intensity among workers at glass fiber plant. Prior to sampling, the employees of the facilities were selected based on previous employee exposure assessments, similarity between work activities, and potentially similar exposures. After collecting the information of workers and buildings, noise measurements, audiometry, annoyance and fatigue assessments were executed. Noise exposure monitoring was examined by sound level meter and dosimeter to determine the environmental noise levels and the noise dose of their workers, respectively. Both area and personal heat stress sampling were performed to assess the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) values of area , respectively. Moreover, estimation of hearing loss was carried out by pure tone hearing tests at 500, 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k , and 6k Hz. Furthermore, risk factors of noise-induced hearing loss, workers'' subjective annoyance and fatigue symptoms were investigated by a constructive questionnaire. Although the noise level of Glass fiber plant work places is lower than high-noise industries, the hearing loss and the annoyance due to occupational noise cannot be ignored.