[Whitepaper] Understanding The Causes and Consequences of Occupational Hearing Loss

Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) is the most commonly reported occupational disease. In the EU approximately 52 million people report having hearing loss. Despite being avoidable in most cases, NIHL is expected to become even more widespread in decades to come, with 1.1 billion young people at risk globally. 

This whitepaper provides insight into the importance of understanding the causes of occupational NIHL and the consequences associated with it – to both individual workers and businesses. It starts by defining noise, reviewing the way in which sound is measured, and gives some examples of the most common industrial applications where NIHL can occur.

The paper outlines the health and safety risks associated with not wearing adequate hearing protection or not fitting it correctly and provides an overview of the physical effects as well as the wider and long-term psychological effects, which are often overlooked. The paper also discusses the challenges faced by health and safety professionals and and NIHL's impact on business - in the EU, the cost of not treating hearing loss is around 178 billion euros every year.

Often seen as a ‘silent’ injury, since it is not visible, NIHL results from exposure to noise, which can cause irreversible hearing damage. It is one of the most common health problems in the workplace but can be difficult to detect as the effects build up gradually over time. Throughout all industry, industrial hearing loss remains the occupational disease with the highest number of civil claims accounting for about 75 percent of all occupational disease claims.

One of the main reasons NIHL remains so widespread is a lack of awareness, which can largely be attributed to gaps in legislation combined with inadequate training practices. The whitepaper finishes by reviewing the changes in regulation which mean that noise and hearing loss is now recognised as one of the most severe and irreversible risks in the workplace.

WHAT IS NOISE?

To put it simply: noise is unwanted sound. As objects vibrate, they create small changes in air pressure, which travels through the air in waves. When these waves reach an ear, they make the eardrum vibrate and these vibrations go through three small bones into the cochlea in the inner ear. There are thousands of tiny hair cells inside the cochlea. It is these hair cells which pick up the vibrations, changing them into electrical signals which are then passed through the auditory nerve to the brain which interprets the signals as sound. Typically, every person is born with approximately 30,000 hair cells in each ear, but over time these cells get damaged, for example by exposure to noise, and subsequently their ability to pick-up and transmit sound is reduced. Once these hair cells are damaged, there is no way of repairing them, and deafness is experienced. The damage done is irreversible, so lost hearing is lost forever.

Read More: DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER HERE