The only future Hearing Protection will be custom measured protection. Why wait?
The bottom line... does your hearing protection work? If it's not been measured in your ear then you don't really know. The unfortunate result of unmeasured hearing is heartbreaking. People find out their protection wasn't working when their hearing test indicates hearing loss. Trouble is, damage is permanent.
Noise in the workplace has been designated by the World Health Organisation as the world's single largest occupational health problem.
The 1995 National Health Survey lists 9.4% of Australians as having self reported hearing loss. That equates to 1.7 million people. The 2001 Survey put that figure at 13.5%. That's a staggering 900,000 new cases in 6 years. Obviously not all are industrial related but even assuming 50% that still leaves over 6,000 new cases a month. It's no wonder that the Australian National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (NOHSC) refers to Hearing Loss as a 'disease'.
NIHL is preventable. OH&S legislation and policy have mandated the use of Hearing Protection Devices (HPD's) for over 20 years. Still we have a problem. Studies over recent years have indicated two main reasons for NIHL to still be so prevalent in the modern world. Firstly, the protection rating of a HPD often doesn't truly match the attenuation achieved in the real world. Secondly, people don't wear their hearing protection correctly or regularly enough. Both reasons have underlying causes and both, given recent technology enhancements, can now be rectified.
With little significant improvement since their introduction 35 years ago, 'one-size-fits-all' foam plugs still account for more than ¾ of the hearing protection market. These HPD's cannot be designed to fit the millions of different ears which are individually unique in shape and size. Each insertion of foam plugs achieves an unpredictable and unmeasurable result. When inserted properly they tend to cause discomfort due to outward pressure and friction points, so that all too often, people simply insert them at the outer edge of their ears, pretending to comply. People who take protection seriously insert them well into the ear, often achieving the necessary acoustic seal, but at the cost of ability to hear danger signals and to communicate in a noisy environment. This necessitates their removal in order to communicate. This is less than ideal because hearing damage from noise is cumulative and requires HPD's to work perfectly and to be worn all of the time. Anything short of optimal performance and continuous use can dramatically compromise overall protection and allow damage to occur.
Duty of Care legislation requires everything 'reasonably practicable' to be done to protect the health and safety of people at the workplace. Until recently the only 'reasonably practical' way to address personal hearing protection was with disposable foam plugs, ear muffs or ear canal caps. The alternative to these devices is a custom fitted hearing protector. Unfortunately, until now, the process was cumbersome and expensive therefore was not a practical way for industry to address workplace safety.
Custom moulded HPDs are now possible on a mass scale. It is difficult for a person to fit a moulded HPD in their ear incorrectly thus solving the variable fit-issue. Couple this with the ability to test the actual protection level and you can eliminate the risk of the HPD not providing enough or possibly providing too much protection for a given noise exposure. By applying precise measurement to every hearing protector, employers now have the capability to complete a Hearing Conservation Program with a quantifiable result.
Scientific measurement has been used for decades to measure environmental noise and individual hearing ability. Now, those same principals can be applied to the measurement of the last line of defence against noise, the humble HPD.
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