Safety climate, hearing climate and hearing protection device use among transportation road maintainers

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Am J Ind Med
• Personal Author:
  Cavallari, Jennifer M. ; Burch, Katrina A. ; Hanrahan, Jeffrey ; Garza, Jennifer ; Dugan, Alicia
• Description:
  Background:
  
  It is important to understand workplace factors including safety climate that influence hearing protection device (HPD) use. We sought to characterize and investigate the association between HPD use, safety climate, and hearing climate, a new climate measure specific to hearing.
  
  Methods:
  
  Using a participatory, Total Worker Health® approach, a survey was developed and distributed among transportation ‘maintainers’ who perform road maintenance and repair. A new hearing climate measure was designed by adapting a safety climate measure. HPD use was assessed by asking workers how often they wear HPD while in noise. The differences in safety climate and hearing climate were compared by frequency of HPD use using ANOVA. Log binomial regression models were used to identify if safety climate and hearing climate predict the prevalence of HPD use.
  
  Results:
  
  Among 166 maintainers, 54% reported always or almost always wearing HPD (high frequency). As compared to low frequency, high frequency HPD users reported a statistically significant higher safety climate (mean (std) of 3.94(0.65) versus 3.64 (0.65), p=0.004) and hearing climate (mean (std) of 3.78 (0.75) versus 3.38 (0.57), p=0.003). Hearing climate (p=0.03), but not safety climate (p=0.40), was a statistically significant predictor of increased prevalence of HPD use.
  
  Conclusions:
  
  Hearing climate predicts frequency of HPD use and may be a useful measure when assessing and improving hearing conservation programs. Results from this study provide baseline, pre-intervention hearing climate and HPD use frequencies that are expected to increase subsequent to the implementation of a hearing health intervention.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Article Hearing Climate Hearing Conservation Hearing Protection Device Use Personal Protective Equipment Safety Climate Transportation Workers
• Source:
  Am J Ind Med. 62(7):590-599
• Pubmed ID:
  31104314
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC7031859
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  K01 OH010761/OH/NIOSH CDC HHS/United States
• Volume:
  62
• Issue:
  7
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:b380fe348ffaf229802b8760d54e93f5130920632f34e206b9006e4b37c9f0a0
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/85257/cdc_85257_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 636.33 KB ]