AN AUDIOMETRIC TEST BATTERY FOR THE EVALUATION OF OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE TO INDUSTRIAL SOLVENTS

Subjects exposed to various industrial solvents were evaluated with a test battery comprising both peripheral and central auditory tests. Af ter otoscopy, all subjects underwent the following audiometric procedu res: air- and bone-conduction in the conventional frequency range, air -conduction in the extended high-frequency range, speech recognition s core, low-pass filtered speech recognition, stapedius reflex threshold , stapedius reflex decay, auditory brainstem response, and cognitive e vent-related responses. Apart from mild to moderate sensorineural hear ing loss found in some of the subjects, the peripheral tests were norm al in most subjects. The central tests (filtered speech and cognitive responses) showed varying degrees of abnormality which may reflect dif ferent levels of disease in this group of subjects.