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Personal Protective Equipment
Published in W. David Yates, Safety Professional’s Reference and Study Guide, 2020
Exposure to high noise levels can cause hearing loss or impairment. It can create physical and psychological stress. There is no cure for noise-induced hearing loss; hence, the prevention of excessive noise exposure is the only way to avoid hearing damage. Specifically, designed protection is required, depending on the type of noise encountered and the auditory condition of the employee.
Hearing Conservation Program
Published in Ron C. McKinnon, The Design, Implementation, and Audit of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, 2019
To determine hearing loss, a hearing test or audiogram is conducted. The person being tested is seated in an almost sound-proof booth and the audiometer feeds a tone through a set of earphones. As soon as the patient hears the signal, he or she pushes a button and a point is plotted on the audiogram. An audiogram tests the hearing level at different frequencies and plots a graph. Any perceivable reduction in the hearing ability of the patient is clearly indicated when the patient’s current tests are compared with an original base line test.
Hearing protection
Published in Rick Snoman, Dance Music Manual, 2019
If you regularly attend clubs, parties, or monitor your music at excessive levels (about 90 dB SPL) and do not protect your ears, you will suffer from hearing loss. This affects more than 11 million people in the UK alone, that equates to one person in six who experiences hearing loss, and this figure is growing. Over 40% of people aged over 50 have some form of hearing loss. Tinnitus is experienced by one in ten and is best described as a constant ringing in the ears. This figure is not age dependent, and it is possible for tinnitus to come and go over time. Tinnitus is often associated with a hearing loss, but this is not always the case. You may experience tinnitus yet suffer from no hearing loss. Tinnitus is also variable for each individual, thus the sound and the effects experienced may differ. Treatment for tinnitus is in the form of amplification, if a hearing loss is detected, and followed with therapy/ education.
Assessing the need for a wearable sign language recognition device for deaf individuals: Results from a national questionnaire
Published in Assistive Technology, 2022
Karly Kudrinko, Emile Flavin, Michael Shepertycky, Qingguo Li
Natural languages are essential for humans to communicate easily and effectively with one another. Sign languages are natural languages used by many individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafened, oral deaf, and/or non-verbal. The term deaf is the audiological name for individuals with hearing loss, described as a partial or total inability to perceive sounds (Strong, 1988). Hearing loss can range from mild to profound, and can be attributed to genetic factors, birth complications, infection, disease, noise exposure, trauma, or aging (Roizen, 2003). Those who are hard of hearing have mild to severe hearing loss, but still have some auditory perception. As a result, hard of hearing individuals often use speech to communicate to some extent (Canadian Association of the Deaf, 2020). Individuals who are deafened or late-deafened are born with the ability to hear and lose that ability either suddenly or progressively. Oral deaf is used to describe severe to profoundly deaf individuals who use lipreading, speech, or a combination of these methods to communicate (Canadian Association of the Deaf, 2020). Individuals who are non-verbal are unable to use spoken language in an effective way, so they rely on alternative methods of communication. According to the Canadian Association of the Deaf, the term Deaf with an uppercase D is used to describe individuals with hearing loss who participate in the cultural and societal practices of Deaf people, centered around the use of sign language (Canadian Association of the Deaf, 2020).
Combining physics-based and Kriging models to improve the estimation of noise exposure
Published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2022
Daniel Ellis, Marcus Tatum, Chao Wang, Geb Thomas, Thomas M. Peters
Noise-induced hearing loss is one of the most common illnesses caused by workplaces in the United States. About 22 million U.S. workers are exposed to hazardous noise each year (Themann and Masterson 2019). Worldwide, 7% to 21% of the disabling hearing loss in adults is attributed to occupational noise (Nelson et al. 2005). Reducing the prevalence of hearing loss by 20% would save the U.S. economy approximately $128 billion each year (Neitzel et al. 2017). Noise-induced hearing loss can be reduced through the use of protective hearing devices (Brink et al. 2002; Hong et al. 2013). Unfortunately, 34% of U.S. workers in workplaces with hazardous noise do not wear hearing protection (Tak et al. 2009). Tailored training programs can improve the rate at which workers use hearing protection devices (Lusk et al. 2003; El Dib et al. 2011). Although the data on hearing loss is sufficient to connect hazardous occupational settings to hearing loss, data on noise exposure is blunt or incomplete (Lie et al. 2016). That lack of information has limited research on the use of tailored feedback to increase hearing protection device usage, among other research topics (Tikka et al. 2017).
The hearing health of live-music sound engineers
Published in Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 2021
Siobhan McGinnity, Elizabeth Francis Beach, Robert S. C. Cowan, Johannes Mulder
Worldwide, roughly 16% of adult-onset hearing loss is attributed to damage resulting from exposure to occupational noise, making it second only to presbycusis as the leading cause of deafness.4,5 For LMSE, the occupational hazard to their hearing arises directly from the music that they help to create, and thus the appropriate nomenclature is music-induced hearing injury (MIHI). This encompasses a cluster of symptoms and auditory damage profiles, resulting from exposure to excessive and/or prolonged sound pressure levels. In acute forms, MIHI occurs as very rapid destruction of the vulnerable inner-ear structures following exposure to sound levels above 130 dB. More common chronic forms, however, are acquired from cumulative injury due to exposure to moderate-to-high sound levels over a prolonged period or from multiple incidents.6,7 The reported auditory symptoms of hearing injury include hearing loss, tinnitus, distortion, diplacusis and hyperacusis. Kähäri et al. reported that 74% of 139 rock/jazz musicians surveyed experienced such symptoms.8