Hearing in Ethnically Different Longshoremen

Abstract

A total of 836 longshoremen, members of the International Longshoreman's Association, who have worked in the same environment for periods up to and exceeding 41 years, were tested for pure-tone threshold sensitivity. When their audiograms were separated according to the subject's subcultural origins it was found that the thresholds of the black Americans were better at the higher test frequencies than those of the other groups, all of which were white.