1. Hearing Protection as an Occupational Safety Measure
The auditory canal is very sensitive to loud noise. Continuous exposure to the same may lead to
health concerns such as high blood pressure, migraines, headaches psychological disorders and
even hearing impairment. Most of the workforce from the manufacturing industries,
construction sites and airports complain of such health issues.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) require enterprises of these industry
sectors to ensure noise reduction at the worksites through permanent solutions or temporarily
with the use of hearing protection devices. Such devices would help to protect the employees
from damage of their ear drums. However, providing with the right hearing protection devices is
a challenge faced by many enterprises in the manufacturing, quarrying sector as well as the
armed forces.
Majority of soldiers in the war front, report of hearing losses due to exposure to gunshots and
explosions as well as noise of heavy vehicles. The use of hearing loss prevention devices is very
important to them but because of the inconvenience to their sight to detect and focus on
enemy targets, they tend to avoid the use of hearing protection aids. The choice of the ear
hearing protection devices vary from ear muffs to ear plugs. However, the performance of these
devices depends most importantly on the size of acoustic leak. The providers of ear hearing
protection devices have developed products with minimized acoustic leakage, leading to better
performance.
Technological innovations in the field of design and development of hearing protection devices
have led to the development of earplugs and safety earmuffs which provide the users not only
with hearing protection but also meets the requirements for high noise communication
solutions to be aware of the situation. Such high-end ear protection devices besides working
like traditional ear protectors also facilitates speech and hearing while staying in loud noise
environments.
The next generation ear hearing protection devices aids the workforce complete isolation from
the loud noise environment while enabling clarity of hearing speech and two way
communications in these environments. Further, reduction of the background noise to
comfortable levels helps the users to recognize the original sounds and be aware of the
surroundings. The two-way radio or Bluetooth communication allows for both short distance
and long distance communication in high noise environments. Besides these features, these new
age ear safety devices are dustproof and water-proof wit adjustable headbands and LCD displays
indicating current channels of communication. Being a plug-and-play device these hearing
protection devices are easy to operate.