This work was an attempt to characterize the various types of noise impulses in terms of their excitation mechanisms. It also studied how impulse noise affects the Leq, on the basis of measurements made at a number of workplaces. The paper concludes with a review of the incidence of hearing damage among groups of personnel exposed to different types of noise in the building industry.
The pregnancy outcome of laboratory employees in three pharmaceutical in Sweden studied with interviews, postal questionnaires, and register studies. The total material shows only a slightly increased miscarriage rate and normal perinatal mortality and malformation rates. Subdivision into two types of laboratory work, "chemical" and "other," revealed a significant difference, with an increased perinatal death rate and an increased rate of major malformations in the chemical group. This observation supports earlier findings indicating that work during pregnancy in a chemical laboratory can represent a hazard to the fetus.
The purpose of this study was to establish the frequency of complications following legal abortion at our hospital, and also to examine the use of contraceptives among these patients. All women who requested abortion in the first or second trimester up to week 15 during an 8-month period (n = 1000) were included in the study. The patients were characterized with regard to age, parity, previous abortion, contraceptive technique before and after the abortion, presence of endocervical/urethral Chlamydia trachomatis and frequency and type of somatic complications following the abortion. The overall frequency of complications (infection, bleeding, recurettage) was 5.4%, and 2.7% were readmitted to the hospital. No certain relation between complication rate and gestational length, age or parity was seen, possibly related to selective prostaglandin pretreatment of the cervix and doxycycline treatment of patients with positive cultures for Chlamydia trachomatis. In contrast to previous Scandinavian studies, we found a smaller proportion of young patients, a low percentage of Chlamydial infections, and an unchanged high rate of failure to use contraceptives.
