Protect your employees from hazardous noise

Conducting a noise risk assessment is necessary to evaluate noise exposure of the worker. Without accurate information about noise exposures, employers may be at greater risk of selecting HPDs with too much or too little noise reduction.

Measure

The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 requires that appropriate hearing protectors be made available when the daily continuous noise level reaches 80dB(A) must be worn when it reaches 85dB(A). At no time should the worker be exposed to the Limit Value of 87dB(A). The role of hearing protectors is clearly defined in helping achieve the Limit value. The protected exposure is the estimated TWA noise exposure of the employee after the protection provided by the HPD is taken into account. The European guidance document EN 458:2016 suggests that a hearing protector which provides an effective sound level at the ear of between 70dB(A) and 80dB(A) is considered suitable.

Given the large number of hearing protection options to choose from, employers should have no difficulty selecting a few HPDs from several categories which provide the right amount of noise reduction. Since ear canal sizes vary widely among groups of workers, be sure to include several sizes and types of earplugs. Because the noise and work tasks are typically rather different, it can be helpful to include other options such as earmuffs, banded hearing protectors, and level-dependent hearing protectors that are designed to help employees maintain their ability to hear important sounds.

Since effective use of hearing protection is related to the skill and motivation of the wearer, training and education of employees is extremely important. Training should include information on the relative benefits of different styles of hearing protectors, how to select them, proper use and care and when to replace them. To boost the impact of your training, be sure to include interactive learning methods, customize the content to your specific facility and discover what may motivate your employees to value their hearing enough to want to consistently wear hearing protection. Remind employees when, where and how to wear hearing protection using signs and posters in noisy areas.

Each hearing protector has a set of attenuation values as derived from official testing in accordance with the appropriate harmonized European standard. The attenuation values are reported in three separate ways; Single Number Rating (SNR), High, Medium and Low (HML) and Octave band. These attenuation values are obtained from very experienced test panel under controlled laboratory conditions. However, in the workplace the noise reduction obtained by the individual wearer can sometimes be significantly lower. The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) attempts to address this issue by enforceing a 'de-rating' of 4dB from the SNR claimed by the manufacturer. However, this is an estimated value which may not address the needs of individual workers.

3M strongly recommends fit testing of hearing protectors as the best method to validate that each employee is obtaining the proper level of protection. You can quickly measure and document the Personal Attenuation Rating (PAR) for each ear using a system such as the 3M™ E-A-Rfit™ Dual Ear Validation System. With this information, you can easily identify those employees who need additional training or who should be wearing a different size or style of hearing protector.