Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development
  • Year: 2018
  • Volume: 9
  • Issue: 12

Impact of noise on hearing of individuals working in the temples

1Consultant Speech Language Pathologist, Columbia Asia Referral Hospital, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

2Assistant Professor (Senior Scale), Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India

3Professor, Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India

*Corresponding Author: Mr. Rajesh Ranjan Assistant Professor (Senior Scale), Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India. Email: rajesh.ranjan@manipal.edu, Ph. No: +91 9480138057

Online published on 9 January, 2019.

Abstract

One of the most mystifying problems faced by individuals who are exposed to high levels of noise (either occupational or recreational) is the slow deterioration of hearing that takes place. Evidence from the literature also indicates that noise exposure causes a significant sensory neural hearing loss. Hence we planned to compare the hearing of priests and workers of temples using Pure tone Audiometry and the fine spectral DPOAEs.

Twenty three male participants between the ages of 20 to 65 years were included in the study. Group 1 participants worked in the temple premises for more than 5 years and all the individuals had reported to have been exposed to noise during work. Group 2 was not exposed to noise.

The temple workers had poor thresholds and significantly reduced SNRs compared to the control group.

Temple noise has impact on individuals working in the temple premises presence of NIHL.

Keywords

NIHL, Temple Noise, hearing Loss