CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Occupational health deals with all aspects of health and safety in

the workplace and has a strong focus on primary prevention of hazards.

The health of the workers has several determinants, including risk factors

at the workplace leading to cancers, accidents, musculoskeletal diseases,

respiratory diseases, hearing loss, circulatory diseases, stress related

disorders and communicable diseases and others (WHO, 2017).

Meanwhile on PT Terminal Petikemas Surabaya (TPS) is engaged

in the provision of container terminal facilities for international and

domestic trade for businesses in eastern Indonesia. In daily practice, TPS

workers will be directly related to the heavy equipment used for operating

daily activities. Most of the working equipment operated by the workers

usually generates a high sound power level (for example, cnoise induced

by a container crane can caused noise with approximately 110 to 115 dBA

for typical operation) and some other noise can be caused by vehicles

(trucks/trains/ship generators) that use for daily operations (Khoo and

Nguyen, 2014).

Noise is a prevalent pollutant that affects all aspects of life around

the globe including damage to health, interrupt activities, and disrupt

normal cognitive process. Stress due to prolonged exposure to noise in

excess of 85dBA is known to cause hearing loss and also lead to

regulatory diseases. Study has found an increase in cardiovascular risk

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with increasing noise levels, in large scale survey also confirms a causal

chain between strong noise annoyance and increased morbidity. Adults

who indicated chronically severe annoyance by neighborhood noise were

found to have an increased risk for respiratory disease, as well as

depression, migraine and further can cause sleep disturbances. Frequent or

long awakenings impede the necessary recovery and rejuvenating effects

of sleep, leading to decreased performance capacity, drowsiness and

tiredness during the day, which in the long run can have a detrimental

effect on health (Khoo and Nguyen, 2014).

Industrial noise does more harm than just damaging hearing, even

if its not enough to damage hearing, but may still be high enough to

interfere with communication and the hearing of warning signals. In

addition, it has been shown that noise causes a greater frequency of errors

in performing everyday tasks and can lead to more workplace accidents

(Khoo and Nguyen, 2014).

Noise can also affect the productivity of workers such as

performance efficiency, depend on the type of noise and the nature of the

task being performed. For intermittent noise, studies have shown that it

impairs the speed of processing new information and the elucidation of a

response, however is only confined to a short period after the onset of the

noise, while loud continuous noise, it is most detrimental for tasks

involving monitoring and the use of caution. For moderate intensity noise,

the effect is less serious but it can reinforce the use of a dominant response
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to stimuli and make the worker less flexible and adaptive to change (Khoo

and Nguyen, 2014).

Tinnitus or ringing in the ears, is the sensation of hearing ringing,

buzzing, hissing, chirping, whistling, or other sounds. The noise can be

intermittent or continuous, and can vary in loudness (Seidu, 2015). It may

be soft or loud, high pitched or low pitched and might be heard in either

one or both ears. People who work in noisy environmentssuch as factory

or construction workers, road crews, or even musicianscan develop

tinnitus over time when ongoing exposure to noise damages tiny sensory

hair cells in the inner ear that help transmit sound to the brain. This is

called noise-induced hearing loss (NIDCD, 2017), but tinnitus can be

noticed even before hearing loss develops (American Academy of

Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, 2017).

1.2 Research Questions

What is the correlation between High-intensity of noise exposure during

working time and the occurrence Tinnitus in TPS (Terminal Petikemas Surabaya)

workers?

1.3 Research Objectives

1.3.1 General Objectives

To learn the correlation between High-intensity of noise exposure

during working time and the occurrence Tinnitus in TPS (Terminal

Petikemas Surabaya) workers.

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1.3.2 Specific Objectives

- To prevent the occurrence Tinnitus in TPS workers, increase the

awareness of working safety and working performance among the

workers.

1.4 Research Benefit

1.4.1 Theoretical Benefit

- To provide new data of the correlation between High-intensity of noise

exposure during working time and the occurrence Tinnitus in TPS

(Terminal Petikemas Surabaya) workers.

1.4.2 Practical Benefit

- To provide supporting methods to prevent the occurrence of work

accident that caused by Tinnitus.

- To give education base on the research finding.

- To reduce the occurrence of work accident.

1.4.3 Research Risk

- Researcher will be exposed to the working area with high noise

intensity and risked to have Tinnitus

- Negative result or not able to prove the correlation between high noise

exposure during working period and the occurence Tinnitus

- Unwanted result