The Joint Effect of Noise Exposure and Job Complexity on Distress and Injury Risk Among Men and Women: The Cardiovascular Occupational Risk Factors Determination in Israel Study

Learning Objectives State the ways in which—in this study of Israeli industrial workers—noise levels and objectively estimated job complexity interacted to influence the risk of work-related injury in men and women. Describe whether and how the risk of injury depended on a number of patient- and work-related factors. Focusing on measures of noise-related stress, point out the implications of these findings for quality of life both at work and in nonworking hours. State possible reason(s) for the observation that exposure to noise effects more adversely those workers performing complex jobs. We sought to explore the possibility that exposure to noise at work might interact with job complexity and gender to affect the incidence of occupational injury among industrial employees. In this study, we examined 4084 men and 1643 women from 21 industrial plants while controlling for a number of potent confounding variables, among them active safety hazards. Logistic regression results showed that the predictor variables interacted and that the highest injury risk (odds ratio = 2.72) was observed in women in high noise and high job complexity, compared with the referents scoring low on these predictors. The comparable injury risk in men was only 1.3. Parallel results were observed for three noise stress indicators: workload, noise annoyance and postwork irritability. We conclude that the joint exposure to noise and high job complexity is disruptive, resulting in higher distress and occupational injury risk, particularly among women.