Prevalence of hypertension and noise-induced hearing loss in Chinese coal miners.

Background: Owing to inconsistent epidemiologic evidence and the presence of confounding factors, the relation between occupational noise exposure and hypertension still remained unclear. We aimed to assess whether Chinese coal miners were at risk of developing hypertension and noise induced hearing loss (NIHL), and whether occupational noise exposure was a risk factor of hypertension.

Methods: A questionnaire was designed to collect information from 738 study participants, all of whom were employees from the Datun Xuzhou Coal Company.