Hearing loss in sports hunters exposed to occupational noise.
The hearing level of 133 railway workers who also hunted for sport was evaluated and compared with that of 82 non-hunting colleagues. Both groups were affected by hearing loss, mostly involving the high-frequency range. Hunters were found to differ from non-hunters by having significantly worse hearing threshold in the ear contralateral to the shoulder supporting the firearm. The interaural threshold difference at 4 kHz was related to the number of rounds fired and exposure duration, thus providing an estimate of the adverse effect of gunfire noise to which the hunters had been exposed.
Prosser
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S
Audiology Department, University of Ferrara, Italy.
Tartari
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MC
Arslan
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E
D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005389:Firearms; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D009623:Noise, Occupational / Q000009:adverse effects*; D013177:Sports