Think about the biggest health and safety risks that are present in your factory. Slips, trips and falls are sadly an everyday occurrence and the biggest cause of workplace injury. Then, there are the more serious hazards – the forklift trucks that buzz around the site, or the hazardous chemicals that could harm someone coming into contact with them.
Chances are, though, you won’t have thought about the one threat that is there all day, from the moment you enter the site to the time you leave. Its effects are profound and can last for a lifetime, and yet many people don’t realise the risk it can pose if not combatted correctly.
That threat? Noise.
Works Management and noise monitoring specialists Casella recently undertook a survey of health and safety managers from sites across the UK, looking at the impact of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) on manufacturers.
The results were eye-opening. Around 60% of respondents have no budget for noise reduction measures, with 43% saying that noise monitoring is less important than other health and safety issues.
An invisible threat
“The main issue with NIHL is the long-term, latency effect,” Jim Struthers, sales manager at Casella told a roundtable hosted at Kimber Drop Forge in Birmingham to discuss the findings. “A lot of people don’t necessarily grasp that. They may have been exposed to a loud noise, suffered minor temporary threshold shift in their hearing and felt better the next day. But their hearing won’t have fully recovered, and it never will.”
This sentiment was echoed around the table, no more so than with Adrian Ward, operations manager at Bridgnorth Aluminium, who has suffered from NIHL throughout a career in engineering. However, he said, it all started on his very first week in the job. “After I’d spent a week working at my first engineering job, I had to take the whole of the following week off to recover. My head was pounding, my ears were ringing. At home, I had to have the TV on full blast. The trouble is, you don’t realise what’s happening straight away. It’s only ten years down the line when you think something might be wrong, when people point out that you can’t hear them talking to you. I wasn’t tested for 30 years, and the damage had been done.”
Younger workers are more blasé about hearing protection, the roundtable agreed. “Older people, who have been doing the job for years, are more likely to have seen the long-term effects of things like NIHL,” said Sharon Webster, health and safety manager at EnviroVent. “We have a range of age groups on our site, and we find that hearing protection is something that predominately the younger staff members underestimate. They all think we’re exaggerating it.
“I recently went to a seminar about noise, where one of the speakers mentioned a piece of research into the 16-24 age group. The number of people in that group who are suffering from hearing loss is growing. It’s largely down to listening to loud music on their iPods, directly into the ears. A lot of people will have already lost a significant percentage of their hearing before their mid-20s. There definitely needs to be an industry campaign to raise awareness.”
Struthers agreed. “Think of the graphic images on cigarette packets. They have gone a long way to changing the smoking habits of people, using tactics designed to make them stop in their tracks and think about the impact of their actions. It’s the same with NIHL. You have to make the message resonate, and if you don’t make it personable to the workforce, it won’t go in.”
Hands-on training
All delegates agreed that people were becoming increasingly aware of the effects of NIHL and the importance of hearing protection. The ongoing challenge is in making sure that all staff remain vigilant to the risks. Even those whose job it is to check noise levels are guilty of struggling to understand the complexities of the data, said Struthers. “Monitoring devices are often purchased in good faith, but then just used once and put in a drawer. A structured monitoring programme is vital, and needs to be adopted by everyone on site.”
EnviroVent take a hands-on approach, explained Webster. “At our regional meetings, all the managers with any health issue have to stand up and tell the others what is affecting them and how it happened. Part of the message is how they can help themselves to avoid the problems. If someone on their team puts their hand up and says ‘actually, this is something I’m struggling with’, people will pay attention. It’s a cultural change that we’re hoping will trickle through the whole company.
“People can sometimes be blind to things that don’t necessarily appear to relate to them. It’s sometimes hard to find examples or information that applies to what you do. We are making our own videos at the moment, highlighting the areas that pose the most risk. That way, nobody can say ‘I don’t work in that particular industry, so it doesn’t matter to me.”
Neil Birt, EHS manager at Bridgnorth Aluminium, said that NIHL is becoming “the new bad back. If I go back to the turn of the millennium, we received about 15 claims a year for various work-related injuries. Now, it’s around two or three, but pretty much all of them are for hearing loss. Insurance companies say it’s too costly to fight it. Trouble is, NIHL is a permanent disability, so if they have a case the payout can be unlimited.”
Protecting the workforce
Ultimately, the best way to prevent people suffering from NIHL is to make sure they are fully protected from noise, both through constant monitoring of the working environment and taking measures to directly protect workers. The type of hearing protection needed depends on the level of noise a worker is exposed to. People cannot be exposed to 87 decibels (dB) over an eight-hour shift without hearing protection. The importance, therefore, of monitoring noise exposure levels that staff are exposed to cannot be underestimated.
Respondents to our survey were unanimous in how they protect their workers: 96.5% said that they specify personal protective equipment (PPE) to combat hearing loss, and 60% offer employee education programmes into NIHL. The British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF) recommends only using hearing protection, such as ear plugs or defenders, as a last resort, instead saying that companies should first look for more proactive solutions, including using quieter machinery or sound guards (http://tinyurl.com/y77bevm3).
“The BSIF also say you should offer your workers a choice of protection,” said Webster. “Lots of people don’t like full ear muffs, especially people with larger ears who would struggle to fit them comfortably. To make sure everyone wears something, you have to offer a choice. Because a lot of our staff work alone, off site, we can’t monitor them all the time. We have to give them something they’ll use even when we’re not monitoring them.”
Technology is also coming to the rescue, said Struthers. “There’s technology out there now that can take a laser image of the inside of the ear and make a bespoke ear guard that fits perfectly. Of course, if you have a large workforce, that will become expensive. People often say that you can’t put a price on health & safety, but there will always be a bottom line. The perfect scenario would be if you could monitor everyone all the time – but we’re still some way off that. For now, the best way to minimise NIHL is to look at your processes and understand where the noise is coming from, and what people are being exposed to. You have to keep a monitoring programme going. There is a big difference between that and measuring. Monitoring is an ongoing process, looking at what has changed and how that has affected exposure.”
Today’s noise monitoring solutions allow real-time, instant data to be collected. These readings can be monitored off-site. All this means that workers can be monitored without being disturbed or feeling like they are being continuously watched over – keeping productivity and efficiency at a high level.
“Ultimately, the best hearing protection is the one you can get people to wear all the time,” added Tim Turney, technical product manager at Casella. “Hearing damage can be plotted on a bell curve – there are some people who won’t be affected by a very loud noise, but then there are some who suffer damage even under relatively quiet conditions. That’s what the latest update to the Control of Noise at Work Regulations (http://tinyurl.com/zya59ko) look to do – get as much of the population protected as possible. NIHL wasn’t on people’s radar, until it suddenly became covered by legislation and seen as important.”
Test regularly
The Health and Safety Executive recommends starting health surveillance before people are exposed to noise (i.e. for new starters or those changing jobs), to give a baseline (http://tinyurl.com/y7wbokkd). This should then be followed by a regular series of re-testing, every year for the first two years, and then at three-yearly intervals.
Monitoring overall site noise levels should also be done regularly, warned Struthers, as it may not be obvious that noise levels have changed. “As machines get older, they tend to make more noise, so it’s important to do regular tests, even if it’s just a quick spot check.”
More could be done before the machinery even makes it into the factory, the roundtable agreed. While the Control of Noise at Work Regulations do put some emphasis on machine makers to ensure their products are as quiet as possible, there is no policing of it.
A significant number (41.2%) of survey respondents had invested in quieter machines to combat NIHL, but Struthers says there is a long way to go. “Most manufacturers nowadays will give noise outputs of their machines,” he said. “It’s a legal requirement called a sound power level. However, they won’t necessarily tell you unless you ask!”
The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 1992 say that a supplier of machinery must provide “information on the risks from noise at workstations, including: A-weighted sound pressure level, where this exceeds 70 dB; maximum C-weighted instantaneous sound pressure level, where this exceeds 130 dB; sound power (a measure of the total sound energy) emitted by the machinery, where the A-weighted sound pressure level exceeds 85 dB.”
Protecting your workforce from noise is a potentially time-consuming and expensive challenge. However, the effects of not doing so far outweigh any downsides. As Ward concluded: “Noise is a risk that we all face, all day, every day. If it was a chemical, we’d take it a lot more seriously. However, because noise isn’t a tangible ‘thing’, you can’t appreciate the damage it’s doing to you."
NIHL survey: key results
83.5% highlight any breaches of protocol surrounding PPE
34.1% regularly re-train their staff on the dangers of NIHL
27.1% employ a third party to undertake noise assessments
21.3% have not updated their health & safety training to reflect NIHL
58.8% currently have no budget for noise reduction measures
41.2% have invested in quieter machinery to combat NIHL
21.2% are unaware of the potential costs if someone claims for NIHL
Top NIHL tips from the roundtable
1 Monitor regularly – Casella’s range of equipment, such as the dBadge2, a wearable device used to measure personal noise exposure in the workplace, can be used to monitor noise levels across your site. The difference between measuring and monitoring is an important distinction: only long-term monitoring will give you the usable data you’ll need. The data you gather should be used to form a long-term picture of noise levels. Remember, as well, that noise levels can vary depending on the conditions in the factory, so make sure your data isn’t being skewed by external factors.
2 Test your workforce – Audiometric testing of your workforce should be part and parcel of their regular health assessment. Also be sure to update the testing every time anything changes on site.
3 Be vigilant – Discipline bad practice, starting with verbal warnings for first-time offenders and escalating accordingly. PPE may only be recommended as a last resort by the BSIF, but if it’s needed, it must be worn.
4 Pressure your machinery suppliers – Energy efficiency and cost come well ahead of noise levels on the list of priorities when looking at new machinery, but always ask about decibel levels.
5 Engage with the youth – Younger staff are less likely to be aware of, or even bothered about, the risks surrounding hearing loss. Encourage your older workers to share their stories and highlight the consequences.
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