PURPOSE: to characterize fishermen's profile, participating in an educational program developed as part of the Prevention of Hearing Loss. METHOD: a cross-sectional study conducted with 52 fishing industry. We carried out educational activities on topics relevant to hearing, such as, operation and care. After the program, the participants answered a questionnaire on the concepts used in the lecture and the presented complaints, and then they passed through the audiometric exam. RESULTS: the age of the participants varied from 24 to 65 year old (average 42.8 year old). 61.53% of audiometry exams were altered and 96.8% of fishermen with hearing loss were more than 40 year old. Answering the questionnaire: 78.84% of the fishermen feel the noise of boats is very intense, 17.31% reported hearing difficulties; 30.77% with difficulty to understanding speech and 46.15% with tinnitus. 76.92% answered that along with hearing loss, tinnitus is one of the effects related to exposure to noise. All these findings indicate the need for individual and collective preventive intervention in this population. The rate of hearing loss is a number that draws attention; however, few have hearing difficulty. The performed educational program was the first step to awareness of these workers regarding prevention of the damage that exposure to noise may come to cause to health. CONCLUSIONS: there was significant dependence between the auditory and age of the fishermen, in other words, the occurrence of hearing loss is significantly greater from 40 year old. Thus, the fishermen who were more than 40 year old had 18.05 times more hearing loss than those who are less than 40 year old.
Audiology; Noise; Hearing Loss; Workers; Public Health; Education
