Table 4.

Factors significantly associated with symptoms of a temporary threshold shift (muffled or distorted hearing) after riding and waiting for mass transit among NYC transit riders, N = 756

Variable	Less than half of the time or more	Never or almost never	OR (95 % CI)	P value
Transit use
Heavy	72.5 % (121)	27.5 % (46)	2.6 (1.66–4.08)	<0.001
Nonheavy	50.3 % (89)	49.7 % (88)
Gender
Male	49.0 % (150)	51.0 % (156)
Female	63.1 % (238)	36.9 % (139)	1.8 (1.31–2.42)	<0.001
Race
White	54.0 % (247)	46.0 % (210)
Non-white	63.1 % (101)	36.9 % (59)	1.5 (1.01–2.11)	0.046
Age
<42 years	52.4 % (196)	47.6 % (178)
>42 years	63.2 % (191)	36.8 % (111)	1.6 (1.15–2.13)	0.005
Hearing protection use
Sometimes/frequent/always	17.5 % (68)	7.8 % (23)	2.5 (1.51–4.11)	<0.001
Rare/never	82.5 % (320)	92.2 % (270)
Hearing rating
Fair/poor	65.8 % (181)	34.2 % (94)	1.9 (1.35–2.55)	<0.001
Good	50.9 % (200)	49.1 % (193)
Others complain about hearing
Yes	74.2 % (118)	25.8 % (41)	2.7 (1.79–3.95)	<0.001
No	51.9 % (268)	48.1 % (248)

Numbers may vary because of missing values