Cognitive Impairment in Administrative Workers due to Noise Ezposure
In some working contexts the existing noise exposure levels arent high enough to cause hearing loss but might be high enough to affect workers cognitive performance. The aim of this study was to analyse the potential effects resulting from low-level noise exposure in the cognitive performance, using a sample of administrative workers. With this purpose, some administrative workers were selected, all of them with noise daily exposures below the lower action value, defined in European legislation - 80 dB(A). Workers were divided into 2 different groups, one group of 12 subjects with noise exposure levels ranging between 74 and 80 dB(A), and the other group, with 11 subjects, with lower levels, ranging between 50 and 55 dB(A). The first group was used to test the hypothetical cognitive impairment and the other group was used as control group. In both groups, the selected 23 workers were requested to fill in a questionnaire with some individual questions, such as age, gender, professional experience, and a question with the Weinsteins noise sensitivity (WNS) scale, to define if each subject was considered to be noise sensitive or not. During a month, subjects were requested to perform a cognitive test in a PC at two different moments, at the middle of the morning and at the middle of the afternoon. From the obtained results it was possible to verify that there is a decrease on the cognitive performance throughout the day, but that occurs both in the exposed and control groups, being more notorious in the latter and in subjects with higher noise sensitivity. When exposed to noise, subjects with higher noise sensitivity seems to be more impaired, and this impairment seems not to be affected by the cumulative time of exposure. This work has highlighted the potential role played by the exposure to noise levels below 80 dB(A) in workers cognitive performance.
Arezes, PM Silva, P Santos, SM
Dept.of Production and Systems, University of Minho 4800-058 Guimaraes, Portugal Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-6
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）