Exposure to industrial noise and professional hearing loss among employees of enterprises in the Murmansk region

Occupational sensorineural hearing loss (OSNHL) is one of the oldest and at the same time urgent problems of occupational medicine. In this regard, the characteristics of the development and prevalence of OSNHL among enterprise workers in the Murmansk region became the aim of the study. We analyzed the data of the social and hygienic monitoring «Working conditions and occupational morbidity», as well as the data of the register of newly identified occupational diseases in the Murmansk region in 2003–2022. It was found that in 2003–2022, noise was the most prevalent harmful production factor (20.6 %), and OSNHL was the most prevalent occupational disease (15.5 %) at the region’s enterprises. 770 cases of OSNHL were diagnosed for the first time, mainly in men (96.0 %), miners (65.1 %) and metallurgical workers (17.5 %). In 308 (40.0 %) workers, ONSHL was the only disease, and in 462 (60.0 %) workers, OSNHL was combined with other diseases, primarily diseases of the musculoskeletal system (n=256) and vibration disease (n=54). Over 20 years, there was a decrease in the following indicators: the share of noise in the overall structure of harmful industrial factors (p<0.001); the risk of exposure to noise (OR=1.13; 95 % CI 1.12–1.15; p<0.001); the proportion of OSNHL in the overall structure of occupational pathology (p<0.001). On the contrary, there was an increase in the share of workers with OSNHL in combination with other diseases (p<0.001) and in the share of OSNHL with mild hearing impairment (p=0.016). The observed 32.8 % decrease in the number of OSNHL cases was due to a decrease in the number of workers, and not to the effect of preventive measures. The data obtained, despite the achieved positive dynamics of hygienic and clinical indicators, demonstrate the need to continue active measures to reduce the level of industrial noise and prevent occupational hearing loss, especially among workers in metallurgical enterprises.