Journal of School of Public Health and

Hearing loss is a controversial occupational disease in fire fighters because exposure to hazardous levels of noise in this job is so variable and unpredictable. In this study, audiometric assessments were performed on 117 fire fighters to evaluate their hearing loss. The results showed that the average fire fighter has a characteristic noise-induced threshold shift, with maximum hearing loss occurring at 6000 Hz. The hearing loss at the test frequencies was related to age, although the association exceeded that of general population only in 6000 Hz frequency in left ear (p=0.021). Despite finding a pattern of threshold shift typical of occupational hearing loss, it must be noted that after controlling for age, there was no strong relation between length of time on the job and the degree of hearing loss. It seems that more extensive studies are needed to evaluate this relationship.