Occupational noise and hypertension in Southern Chinese workers: a large occupational population-based study

An increasing number of original studies suggested that occupational noise exposure might be associated with the risk of hypertension, but the results remain inconsistent and inconclusive. In addition, the attributable fraction (AF) of occupational noise exposure has not been well quantified. We aimed to conduct a large-scale occupational population-based study to comprehensively investigate the relationship between occupational noise exposure and blood pressure and different hypertension subtypes and to estimate the AF for hypertension burden attributable to occupational noise exposure. A total of 715,135 workers aged 18-60 years were included in this study based on the Key Occupational Diseases Surveillance Project of Guangdong in 2020. Multiple linear regression was performed to explore the relationships of occupational noise exposure status, the combination of occupational noise exposure and binaural high frequency threshold on average (BHFTA) with systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP). Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the relationshipassociation between occupational noise exposure status, occupational noise exposure combined with BHFTA and hypertension. Furthermore, the attributable risk (AR) was calculated to estimate the hypertension burden attributed to occupational exposure to noise. The prevalence of hypertension among occupational noise-exposed participants was 13·7%. SBP and DBP were both significantly associated with the occupational noise exposure status and classification of occupational noise exposure combined with BHFTA in the crude and adjusted models (all P