 You, the men and women who work in minds and related facilities, are routinely exposed to dangerous conditions and situations. You must always be alert to a constantly changing environment, filled with hazards that can injure and even kill in seconds. Noise is a hazard that can diminish or destroy your hearing. Noise can mask sounds that you should be hearing. This can cause you stress, give you headaches and affect other parts of your body. This video will introduce you to the basic requirements of EMSHA's Occupational Noise Standard. We'll also discuss how noise impacts your health and how to help protect yourself. It's important to remember that work-related hearing loss is preventable. Let's look at the provisions of this regulation. Noise exposure assessment, action level, permissible exposure level, dual hearing protection level, hearing conservation program, hearing protectors, audiometric testing and training. These points will be covered throughout this video. One of the key elements of the noise rule is developing a hearing conservation program when noise in your work areas reach certain levels. Noise is defined as annoying sound or unwanted sound, but in the mining environment it can prove to be harmful sound. What are the harmful effects of too much noise? It can cause hearing loss, but other things can also happen. For example, let's eavesdrop on a typical day in the life of John. Dad, can you pick up some wood dowels on your way home from work for my science project? Sure, okay. Have a good day at work, Dad. See you this evening. I should have asked her how many red towels she wants. Another one of those weird science projects, I guess. I'll get her a couple. That should be enough. John speaking. Hi, John. I need you to go over to building three and pick up nine light bulbs right away. Can you do that? Okay. Bye. Her orders get screwier every day. The white pine boards are in building C. Wonder how many we really need. Man, I should have heard that truck coming. You know? I think I need to get my hearing checked. John has likely suffered a hearing loss, and if he's lucky, it is just a temporary or slight hearing loss. Let's look at how the ear works and see if we can find out if that's what happened to John. First, let's look at the mechanics of sound. Sound can be described in two ways, in terms of frequency and intensity. Intensity is measured in hertz or cycles per second, and intensity is measured in decibels. 0 to 10 decibels would be a very, very faint sound, leaves rustling at a distance. 50 to 60 decibels would be conversation about the level that we're talking right now. 100 decibels would be machinery, chainsaw, such like that. 120, 130 would be a rock and roll band, and 180 would be the space shuttle taken off. Sound occurs, moves along the air, your ear picks it up, moves your eardrum, rocking those three tiny little bones, the three tiny little bones, push into a fluid-filled chamber called the cochlea, displacing the fluid and tickling a bunch of little hair cells. These hair cells are the sensors that send the vibration up to the brain that should allow you to hear. Hair cells act as amplifiers and shock absorbers, amplifiers that allow you to hear very, very faint sounds that otherwise you would not be able to. It's those that get damaged primarily with noise, and once they're gone, you lose the ability to hear soft sounds and also the ability to tolerate loud sounds. John should try to find out whether he has any hearing damage and what he should do about it. He'd find out just the same way you can by taking a hearing test, which is also called an audiometric test. I'm one of the audiologists here. I'll be testing your hearing today. Have you, in fact, been exposed to noise in the last 14 hours? No, I haven't, doctor. In this profession, we like to differentiate temporary shifting of hearing from permanent shifting. The only way we can know that we're not measuring a temporary shift is if you've been away from noise at least 14 hours. I understand. Very good. The results of this test will show whether you've lost any ability to hear certain sounds at a range from high to low frequencies. For instance, one of the first frequencies usually lost is the 4,000 Hertz frequency range near that of a conversational speech. Typical sounds in that range are high-pitched, like the voices of women and children. Yes, it is. The graph of hearing that we've just performed on you. John was lucky this time because he hasn't experienced any permanent hearing loss. We would recommend strongly the wearing of hearing protection when you continue to be in these excessive noise situations. When you're exposed to noise over a long period of time, it will most assuredly damage your hearing. But I'm used to the noise. Constant exposure to loud levels of noise will not toughen your ear at all. It will damage it, and some sounds will no longer be audible to you. Therefore, you think you're toughening it, but you're not. You're losing your hearing. Hearing aids help in some cases, but all they do is make sounds louder. They can't fix any damage to the ability to recognize and understand various sounds. The best approach is to do all you can to prevent hearing loss. Once the loss is permanent, there is no way to restore it. So how can you prevent hearing loss, or at least prevent any hearing loss you may already have from getting worse? Who is responsible for protecting your hearing? The answer is both you and your employer share the responsibility of protecting your hearing. To prevent noise-induced hearing loss among employees, your employer must evaluate your work environment, determine the noise levels, and inform you what your potential noise exposures are. Your employer must provide engineering or administrative controls to reduce exposures if the noise output in your workplace averages more than 90 DBA. If your average noise exposure is 85 DBA or more, a hearing conservation program will be established and you will automatically be enrolled in this plan. As part of this hearing conservation program, the operator will provide a variety of appropriate hearing protectors for you to select from and show you how to wear them. Your employer will offer you the opportunity to get your hearing tested periodically, at least every 12 months while you're enrolled in the hearing conservation program. You will be given initial and annual training and your employer will keep complete records. To protect and conserve your hearing, you need to select, check the fit of, and wear hearing protectors correctly. If the plugs do not fit your ears properly, they can't protect your hearing. Maintain engineering controls in good working order. For example, if you're a truck driver in an environmental cab, leave the windows up to keep surrounding noise out. Promptly report needed repairs and replacements for controls. Comply with administrative controls. That is, if a work shift is split between you and a co-worker in order for your noise exposure to be greatly reduced, work only the time you are scheduled for. Take advantage of hearing testing and avoid noisy situations off the job unless you are wearing adequate hearing protectors. Remember, hearing protectors are your last line of defense against the hazard of noise. These plugs and muffs and all these hearing protectors are designed to screen out different types of frequencies. So it's important as an employer, not necessarily for you as an employee, but the employer needs to know the frequency of the noise that he's trying to filter out so that he can provide to you the proper type of hearing protector that is going to benefit you most that you get the most use out of. There's basically two types of hearing protectors that you can use. We have ear muffs and ear plugs. You need to make sure that you choose the type that you're using that's going to be the most beneficial to you. Normally, as a general rule, ear plugs will have a higher noise reduction rating than the muffs. One of the things that these things are good for is that you don't have to worry about getting the plugs rolled up, stuck into your ear, these fit over your ears. A lot of people think that they're very good in colder weather because it helps with the cold, keeps your ears a little warmer. It also helps keep some of the wind out of your ears. Now there are some disadvantages to these too because regardless of where you're working, everybody has to wear safety glasses on the job. And if you don't have the proper muffs, those safety glasses are going to interfere with the seal that goes around your ear so you're going to lose some of that noise reduction rating. It don't take a lot. If you have a beard, long hair, jewelry to interfere with the seal of these around your head. In hot weather, you get sweat built up between the muff and your head. These have a tendency to slip around on you. The other thing that that does to these muffs is that causes deterioration of the muff. That's why it's always very important before you put the muffs on that you examine these just as you would any other safety equipment to make sure that it has been maintained properly. That the seal is in good shape, that the foam on the inside is as it's supposed to be and hasn't been deteriorated or for that matter taken out. Because if it's not maintained properly, you're not going to get the protection that you need. You can also get a type of muff that's attached to the hard hat so you don't always want to be wearing your ear muffs or ear plugs and this particular model is very easy to use. It's kind of handy to have the thing attached that way you also don't lose it. So it's important that when you're using a pair of muffs that you actually use them as they're intended. Some of them are over the head, some of them fit behind your head. So you want to make sure that when you're using a pair that you use it as its design because you don't get the full benefit of the NRR factor noise reduction rating if they're actually not worn properly. Now one of the other things that we want to talk about, we want to talk about the foam fitted plugs. This is an extremely popular type of plug that's used when you're taking the plug, you have it rolled up, you're supposed to take the plug in your hand, go over the back of your head, pull your ear out, insert the plug, and then let loose. What happens then is as you let loose the foam will actually spread out and will actually fill the canal up for you. So this is an advantage of this type of a plug and one of the disadvantages is that if you have to make any adjustments to the plug it has to come out. So there's not really any adjustment you can make with it. We have other types of plugs that are in fact connected by a string so when you take the plug out you don't lose it. This particular one hooks on the end of your eyeglasses right off of the ears of your eyeglasses so that when you take them off your glasses they're going to hang and they're going to be real handy for you to use. It is so important that when you pick out a set of hearing protectors that you pick out something that fits you that you're comfortable with. You should have an array of protectors to choose from. No two people's ears are alike. You may have two ear canals that are actually even different sizes. Again, that's one of the advantages that some people like about an ear mouth. You don't have to worry about the size of the ear canal when you're fitting it. That's one of the advantages that people have with the foam fitted plugs because they will adjust to the size of your ear. That's why these come in different sizes. Now if you have the ones that are separate as this pack comes where they're individual you can get different sizes for each ear. Now you're not going to wear these if they're not comfortable just like you won't wear a pair of shoes that don't fit your feet. If the ear plugs or the hearing protectors that you're using aren't comfortable you're not going to use them. So you get no benefit of them if they stay in your case or in your shirt pocket. You've got to wear them to get the benefit from them. So you want to make sure that when you pick out a set of hearing protectors then it's very comfortable. When you're using any type of a plug that you have in your ear you need to be very cautious when you remove those. You just don't want to jerk them out. It'll pop and it will cause your ear to pop and you can actually harm your ear by pulling these plugs out too quickly. If you get it in there and it's not comfortable you can twist them. And when you twist them it lets that trapped air that's pushed inside when you put it in it allows it to escape and you still have a real good seal. And always use a clean pair of hearing protectors. These are washable, they are reusable however they will wear, they will deteriorate. So if that does happen you want to get rid of them. We know that the mining industry is not exactly the cleanest industry in the world. You're going to get dirt and you're going to get foreign matter on this and sticking that stuff back into your ear can cause you some problems with your ear. Not just the hearing but actually you can get infections and other type of auditory problems that can develop from that. If you can't get a good fit with any particular type of plug you can go in an audiologist and they will form fit plugs for you. The other thing that you need to be knowledgeable of is the area that you're working in and the noise levels. You can wear dual hearing protection so you'll have the plugs in and the muffs on. A lot of people find that this is one of the most preferred ways in a noisy area to protect your hearing. It's extremely important when you're choosing a pair of hearing protectors that you get the right hearing protectors that has the right NRR value. What I'd like for you to do is what we want to refer to as a fit check on these plugs and muffs. So take the ear plugs and put it in either ear. I don't care right or left. We should roll it in and get you a nice fit. And then what I'd like for you to do is I'd like for you to count to five loud enough to where you can hear yourself pretty well and see if you can see a difference between the left and the right ear, the ear that you have the plug in and the ear that you don't. One, two, three, four, five. Can you tell the difference? I can tell the difference. Very good. After you do that I want you to put it in the other ear and then see what kind of difference you get. One, two, three, four, five. The sound should sound like now when you talk or you hear sounds it should sound like it's coming from the middle of your head. That means that you have a nice good fit with your hearing protectors that they're working properly. Now you should get that same effect when you use the muffs also. Okay? One, two, three, four, five. So now you can do that every time you put the plugs in or the muffs on. You can do this check to make sure that you have a good fit. You should also protect your hearing away from the job. It's not just work that can cause hearing loss. Sometimes it's the fun stuff. Cool. Listen. Yes, sound can be sweet and if you could hear all those sounds your hearing is still very good. So continue taking care of your hearing. If however those sounds weren't clear or audible you could have already experienced some hearing loss either temporary or permanent. It's just as important that you start protecting your hearing now in order to prevent any further loss or the sounds you just listened to might be lost forever. Good hearing makes your life richer and more enjoyable. Saving your hearing could save your life. Save your hearing, save your life. For more information about Part 62, the MSHA Noise Rule, please visit our website at www.msha.gov.