A military initiative is this year’s honoree in the prestigious Safe-in-Sound Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Award™ which is presented annually by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), in partnership with the National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA).
Protecting workers from harmful noise on the job is an important component to worker safety programs. Honeywell (NYSE: HON) has released a new earplug dispenser for commercial-industrial use that makes it easier than ever for companies to achieve better hearing protection for their employees.
The Honeywell Howard Leight HL400 dispenser offers more choices to serve a wider range of situational needs; for example, it can accommodate the full line of Howard Leight disposable earplugs, has more built-in, flexible mounting options, refills easier and dispenses in multiple ways.
Mayor Bill de Blasio this week signed legislation into law, authored by Council Member Ben Kallos in collaboration with DEP, aimed at reducing overnight and weekend construction noise and making New York City more livable. Intro. 1653-B allows inspectors to take noise readings from the roadway or sidewalk, rather than requiring that the reading be taken from inside of a complainant’s apartment, empowers inspectors to shut down equipment that is too loud, and calls for new rules for responding when the noise is most likely to happen again.
Sound is mechanical. A sound is a shove — just a little one, a tap on the tightly stretched membrane of your ear drum, according to an article in FiveThirtyEight. The louder the sound, the heavier the knock. If a sound is loud enough, it can rip a hole in your ear drum. If a sound is loud enough, it can plow into you like a linebacker and knock you flat on your butt.
OSHA has commented on safety and the use of personal headphones on construction sites. OSHA discourages their use in the workplace because they prevent the wearer from receiving auditory cues about the surrounding environment and because they are ineffective at preventing noise-related damage to the ears, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle.
In the OSHA pocket booklet "Protecting Yourself from Noise in Construction," the agency comments directly on the use of the headphones.
The Safe-in-Sound Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Awards™ are presented each year at the Annual Conference of the National Hearing Conservation Association. The awards are co=sponsored by NHCA and NIOSH. The 2018 awards will be presented at this year’s National Hearing Conservation Association meeting, Feb. 15-17, in Orlando.
The annual meeting of hearing conservation and noise experts, members of NHCA, will be held next month at the Caribe Royale Orlando, FL.
NHCA was formed in June of 1976, at that time designated as the Hearing Conservation Association. The founders of NHCA were mainly audiologists and otolaryngologists who were concerned with the serious problem of noise-induced hearing impairment resulting from occupational exposure to noise.
Kansas City Chiefs fans' broke Seattle Seahawks' fans' record of having the loudest outdoor stadium by creating 142.2 decibels worth of noise at Arrowhead Stadium during a Monday night game on September 29, 2014.
By comparison, standing on an aircraft carrier has a noise level of 140 decibels. Standing 30 feet from a jet at take-off has a noise level of 150 decibels.
Research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on noise-induced hearing loss in non-workplace settings has produced some alarming statistics. Testing on nearly 4,000 adults in the U.S. in 2014 found that:
Approximately 15% of American adults, aged 18 and older, reported some degree of trouble with hearing—about as much as the prevalence reported for both diabetes and cancer combined (Vital Health Stat 10. 2014;260:1 http://bit.ly/2lZlMX0).
Nearly 24% of adults have measurable hearing damage in one or both ears.
Nearly 50% of adults with this damage were not exposed to noise at work (MMWR. 2017; 66[5]:139 http://bit.ly/2lZxpNr).
10. Nursery Worker or Teacher (85 dB)
A class of 30 children can be exceptionally noisy. Nursery workers and teachers suffer the effects of excessive noise — up to 85 dB — which, with continued and prolonged exposure, can cause damage to the eardrum.
