Occupational Exposure to Noise in the Extractive Industry and Earthworks—Short Review

Abstract

Background: Occupational noise is still a significant issue having severe impacts on the worker’s health. This problem is relevant in the extractive industry since it endangers the worker and the surrounding communities. Objective: This short review aimed to identify the occupational exposure to noise setting within the extractive sector and earthworks. Methodology: The Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses were used to conduct the search. “Noise” was combined with “extractive industry” (and similar terms) and “earthworks” in multidisciplinary databases and journals. A set of exclusion criteria was determined to filter the information of this first phase, and the results were fully appraised on a narrative basis. Results and discussion: From the 1148 papers primarily identified, only 15 met all the criteria and were included in this work. The data were categorised and divided into activity, equipment, job category and working area. Despite being able to provide some insight into each category, no detail related to experimental methodology was reported, being the main limitation in analysing the results. Conclusions: Although this research met the proposed topic, further work needs to be carried out, namely the inclusion of more relevant articles and statistical analysis.