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| Education and motivation are essential for an effective hearing loss prevention program |
Background
Hearing conservation programs are mandated for most U.S. mining operations. The conventional program, as codified in OSHA and MSHA regulations and widely taught to hearing conservationists, consists of noise exposure monitoring, hearing tests, promotion of hearing protection, education, and record-keeping. NIOSH best-practices guidelines recommend that the programs will be enhanced by including procedural audits, support of noise controls, program evaluation, and worker motivation (as an adjunct to education). With these enhancements, NIOSH refers to the ideal approach as a hearing loss prevention program.
To provide information about the best way to implement a hearing loss prevention program, NIOSH needed to collect and evaluate best practices in a field setting. A cooperative agreement with the Pennsylvania State University resulted in a study that implemented many of the principles NIOSH put forth in its 1996 publication, "Preventing Occupational Hearing Loss: A Practical Guide."
Potential Outcome
The cooperative project was completed in 2004, and the results began to be disseminated through a series of workshops in 2005. The model hearing loss prevention program forms the basis for a new research study that incorporates worker participation in problem-solving. The new study, to be conducted during 2005-2008, will yield a series of intervention products, culminating in guidelines for implementing “best practices” through worker participation. These impacts will affect the majority of the workforce enrolled in hearing conservation programs. For instance, program enrollment rose from 7% to 82% of all coal miners from 2000 to 2003. If adopted, an effective hearing loss prevention program could substantially reduce the incidence of noise-induced hearing loss to an annual rate of less than 1% standard threshold shifts.