Manufacturers of personal hearing protection solutions are missing an opportunity by not raising their voices to be heard in the debate over government regulations limiting noise in the workplace. When two U.S. Senators this week persuaded the U.S. Labor Department to back off from proposed rule changes that would have required large and small companies to more aggressively manage noise levels in the workplace, they put their finger on a critical question: Should the government force companies to limit the overall noise they create, or should government instead simply require companies to provide their employees with effective personal hearing protection?
When the government tells manufacturers to lower overall workplace noise volume, it forces businesses to install expensive sound-dampening systems that can amount to huge capital investments. But when the government simply tells businesses to protect the hearing of their workers in the most effective way possible, the first move is to outfit workers with highly effective (and highly cost-effective) ear plugs, ear muffs, or more sophisticated hearing protection devices that allow them to communicate even as their hearing is protected from over-loud noise.
Unfortunately, government bureaucrats often are more interested in fast but expensive one-size-fits-all solutions than they are in getting up to speed on things like the variety of new personal hearing protection technologies that can do the job better and less expensively. Therefore, if makers of personal hearing protection devices want to increase their market and sales, they should be advocating for sensible hearing-protection rules that require companies to issue the right kind of hearing protection equipment to their employees, over rules that require more expensive investments in overall workplace noise reduction.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Sen. Olympia Snow, a Republican from Maine, this week sent a letter to the Secretary of Labor complaining that the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) recent revised interpretation of existing workplace noise regulations would put an unfair burden on small businesses. After receiving the letter, OSHA quickly reversed course and decided to study the matter more, asking for more comments and promising to look into more alternatives before revising the rules. It’s an excellent opportunity now for manufacturers of personal hearing protection devices to weigh into the debate.
The new interpretation OSHA had proposed shifted the emphasis of government regulations from requiring that companies issue personal hearing protection to individual employees toward requiring that companies invest in more expensive workplace noise-reduction systems. But Senators Lieberman and Snow argued that the new interpretation was a dramatic change in direction that would kill job growth and threaten to put many small manufacturers out of business:
OSHA would be overturning established and, to our understanding, effective policy that presently allows businesses to provide their employees with “personal protective equipment” — such as ear plugs and ear muffs that are fitted to the individual employees — if those items are more cost-effective than far broader administrative or engineering controls….These controls could include limiting the amount of time an employee can work in an area with high noise, or installing expensive and disruptive noise-dampening equipment at the employer’s facility….”
The debate over regulating workplace noise and worker hearing protection is a good one to have. I personally believe there is a role for the government to take steps to protect public and private employees from on-the-job injury and disability. And I believe noise-induced hearing loss should qualify as a disability, as it does for military veterans. At the same time, I believe there’s been far too little awareness of the problem of noise-induced hearing loss and the many easy, cost-effective ways it can be prevented. If people knew how preventable hearing loss can be, they would be faster to make the small investments in money and time to ensure the proper protection.
Until recently, the main form of personal hearing protection was ear plugs and ear muffs — but because in many noisy workplaces they made it impossible to communicate, they often weren’t practical. But now there are plenty of intelligent ear pieces that can dampen dangerously loud noise and filter out background noises while improving understanding of speech, even in noisiest environments. There are also numerous wireless communication systems that protect hearing even as they dramatically improve collaboration among teams in noisy workplaces. And the costs of these intelligent devices are coming down all the time.
If government regulators were more aware of this current revolution in hearing protection technology, maybe they would be able to draw up regulations more carefully in ways that truly protect workers’ hearing while eliminating any unnecessary costs of doing business. And that would be good news for the innovators in the hearing protection business who would increase their sales while performing a real service to society.
The post How Much Government Regulation Should There Be Of Noise And Hearing Loss In The Workplace? appeared first on Hearing Mojo.
