• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.31 no.4 s.63
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• pp.692-707
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• 1998

Aim. A neurobehavioral test for workers exposed to organic solvents in the workplace can be affected by many factors : age, education, motivation, ethnicity, etc. To apply more suitable neurobehavioral test for Korean workers, we evaluated the validity of several items of computerized and traditional neurobehavioral tests. Methods. We have applied eleven tests : four items of computerized neurobehavioral test(Swedish Performance Evaluation System) including Addition, Symbol-Digit, Dig-it Span, and Finger tapping speed, and seven items of traditional neurobehavioral test consisting of Addition, Digit-Symbol, Digit Span, Benton visual retention test, Pursuit aiming, Pegboard, and Tapping. These tests were performed on 96 workers exposed to solvents, and 100 reference workers. The concurrent and construct validities were evaluated by group difference, correlation with age, educational level, hippuric acid level, neurotoxic symptom, current exposure level, multitrait-multimethod matrix, fator analysis, and discriminant analysis. Results. Statistically significant differences were observed between the workers exposed to solvents and referents in computerized Symbol-Digit, Finger tapping speed, traditional Digit-Symbol and Pegboard. The computerized Symbol-Digit, traditional Digit-Symbol, Addition, Benton visual retention test, and Pegboard were found to be related to the age. The performance of computerized Symbol-Digit, Addition, and traditional Digit-Symbol were found to be related to the educational level significantly. The computerized Symbol-Digit, Finger tapping speed, and traditional Digit-Symbol were found to be related to hippuric acid, and neurotoxic symptom. The discriminability of Finger tapping speed, and Pegboard was better than the other tests. In discriminant analysis, the model with two variables, the computerized Symbol-Digit and Pegboard, classified almost 70 percent of the workers correctly. Conclusions. These results suggest that the computerized Symbol-Digit, Finger tapping speed, and Pegboard are more satisfactory for our purpose, and the Addition, Tapping, Benton visual retention test, and Pursuit aiming are less valid than other items. These may allow the reasonable selection of core neurobehavioral tests for workers exposed to solvents in Korea.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2003

Objectives : Impaired hearing is a prevalent occupational hazard, not only in industry, but also in the armed forces. In military life, noise has unusual characteristics, and constitutes a serious hazard to hearing. The aim of this study was to analyze the hearing threshold data in order to compare the hearing loss among shipyard workers, representing different workers, and a military service background. Methods : A cross-sectional audiological survey, combined with a questionnaire study, was conducted on a stratified random sample of 440 shipyard workers, with long-term exposure to noise. The employees were divided into four groups, according to their working and military service backgrounds, in relation to their exposure to noise. Results : As expected, the working and military noise exposure group (Group I) had significantly poorer hearing than the other groups. The high frequencies (2-8 kHz) showed the greatest difference in terms of poorer fearing in both ears. The prevalence of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) was highest in Group I. A logistic regression analysis was applied to determine the dependence of the NIHL in relation to age, smoking, drinking, working duration, ear protection, past history of ear diseases, and working and military sonics backgrounds, on the noise exposure The important factors found to be related to the NIHL, in relation to noise exposure were: age, work duration, and working and military service backgrounds. The adjusted odds ratio estimates for NIML in the right ear were 4.5 times greater (95% CI 1.7-11.6) for the military noise exposed group, and 7.9 times greater (95% CI 2.0-31.3) for the working noise exposed group than in the controls. The hearing thresholds at the pure-tone average and 4 kHz were significantly increased with age and work duration with both the working and military service backgrounds. Conclusions : From these results, specific preventive programs were planned, which should be assessed by epidemiological surveillance of the military noise exposed population.