Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Patrol police officers experience irregular, intermittent noise during routine public-facing duties, yet task-resolved exposure patterns are not well characterized. We conducted personal full-shift noise monitoring with 1-min logging among 44 community patrol police officers over six consecutive days at an urban police substation in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Shift-normalized 8-h time-weighted average levels were calculated under Korean Ministry of Employment and Labor and American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists criteria. Dispatch records from the national 112 emergency call system were linked to minute-level measurements to quantify task-specific noise intensity during response periods and the Task-Attributable Fraction, defined as the proportion of total shift-integrated sound energy attributable to dispatch-defined tasks, along with time share. All normalized 8-h time-weighted average levels were below the respective occupational reference limits. Nonetheless, dispatch-related responses contributed substantially to cumulative sound energy despite occupying a smaller fraction of shift time, indicating that intermittent high-intensity episodes can disproportionately drive full-shift exposure. Task-specific noise intensity differed across incident subtypes; 28 observed subtypes accounted for 80.6% of the national annual dispatch volume in 2023. Energy-based task attribution provides a more informative characterization of patrol-duty noise exposure than time-based metrics alone and may support targeted prevention and health monitoring strategies.</p>