Investigations of Noise-Related Tinnitus

Tinnitus is a frequent consequence of noise trauma. Usually, however, the main focus regarding the consequences of noise trauma is placed on hearing loss, instead of tinnitus. The objectives of the present study were to assess various aspects of noise-related tinnitus in Finland, such as to determine the main causes of conscript acute acoustic traumas (AAT) in the military, assess tinnitus prevalence after noise trauma, characterize long-term AAT-related tinnitus prevalence and characteristics, assess occupational tinnitus, and evaluate the efficacy of hearing protection regulations in preventing hearing loss and tinnitus. The study comprised several independent noise-exposed groups: conscripts performing their military duty, former conscripts who suffered an AAT over a decade earlier, bomb explosion victims, and retired army personnel. Tinnitus questionnaires were used to assess tinnitus prevalence and characteristics. For occupational tinnitus, occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) reports to the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health were reviewed. Tinnitus is a common result of AAT, blast exposure and long-term noise exposure. Despite hearing protection regulations, up to hundreds of AATs occur annually among conscripts in the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF). The most common cause is an accidental shot, accounting for approximately half of the cases. Conscript AATs are mainly due to accidental shots, while the ear is unprotected. Only seldom is an AAT due to negligence. The most common causative weapon of conscript AATs is the assault rifle, accounting for 81% of conscript AATs. After AAT, the majority of tinnitus cases resolve during military service and become asymptomatic. However, in one-fifth of the cases, tinnitus persists, causing problems such as sleeping and concentration difficulties in many. In Finland, occupational tinnitus often remains unreported in conjunction with NIHL reports. In a survey of occupational NIHL cases, tinnitus was mentioned in only four per cent. However, a subsequent inquiry revealed that almost 90% in fact had tinnitus, indicating that most cases remained undetected and unreported. The best way to prevent noise-related tinnitus is prevention of noise trauma. In the military, hearing protection guidelines have been revised several times over the years. These regulations have been effective in reducing hearing loss of professional soldiers. There has also been a reduction in cases with tinnitus, but the decrease was not significant. However, with improved hearing protection regulations, a significant reduction in the risk of more serious, disturbing tinnitus was observed.

Trafficking in human beings and Foucauldian biopower : A case study in the expansion of the human rights phenomenon

Trafficking in human beings has become one of the most talked about criminal concerns of the 21st century. But this is not all that it has become. Trafficking has also been declared as one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. In this sense, it has become a part of the expansion of the human rights phenomenon. Although it is easy to see that the crime of trafficking violates several of the human rights of its victims, it is still, in its essence, a fairly conventional although particularly heinous and often transnational crime, consisting of acts between private actors, and lacking, therefore, the vertical effect associated traditionally with human rights violations. This thesis asks, then, why, and how, has the anti-trafficking campaign been translated in human rights language. And even more fundamentally: in light of the critical, theoretical studies surrounding the expansion of the human rights phenomenon, especially that of Costas Douzinas, who has declared that we have come to the end of human rights as a consequence of the expansion and bureaucratization of the phenomenon, can human rights actually bring salvation to the victims of trafficking? The thesis demonstrates that the translation process of the anti-trafficking campaign into human rights language has been a complicated process involving various actors, including scholars, feminist NGOs, local activists and global human rights NGOs. It has also been driven by a complicated web of interests, the most prevalent one the sincere will to help the victims having become entangled with other aims, such as political, economical, and structural goals. As a consequence of its fragmented background, the human rights approach to trafficking seeks still its final form, consisting of several different claims. After an assessment of these claims from a legal perspective, this thesis concludes that the approach is most relevant regarding the mistreatment of victims of trafficking in the hands of state authorities. It seems to be quite common that authorities have trouble identifying the victims of trafficking, which means that the rights granted to themin international and national documents are not realized in practice, but victims of trafficking are systematically deported as illegal immigrants. It is argued that in order to understand the measures of the authorities, and to assess the usefulness of human rights, it is necessary to adopt a Foucauldian perspective and to observe the measures as biopolitical defence mechanisms. From a biopolitical perspective, the victims of trafficking can be seen as a threat to the population a threat that must be eliminated either by assimilating them to the main population with the help of disciplinary techniques, or by excluding them completely from the society. This biopolitical aim is accomplished through an impenetrable net of seemingly insignificant practices and discourses that not even the participants are aware of. As a result of these practices and discourses, trafficking victims only very few of fit the myth of the perfect victim, produced by biopolitical discourses become invisible and therefore subject to deportation as (risky) illegal immigrants, turning them into bare life in the Agambenian sense, represented by the homo sacer, who cannot be sacrificed, yet does not enjoy the protection of the society and its laws. It is argued, following Jacques Rancière and Slavoj i ek, that human rights can, through their universality and formal equality, provide bare life the tools to formulate political claims and therefore utilize their politicization through their exclusion to return to the sphere of power and politics. Even though human rights have inevitably become entangled with biopolitical practices, they are still perhaps the most efficient way to challenge biopower. Human rights have not, therefore, become useless for the victims of trafficking, but they must be conceived as a universal tool to formulate political claims and challenge power .In the case of trafficking this means that human rights must be utilized to constantly renegotiate the borders of the problematic concept of victim of trafficking created by international instruments, policies and discourses, including those that are sincerely aimed to provide help for the victims.