Photo: Sheila in Moonducks, Flickr
It seems young construction workers don’t care enough about their eardrums.
New data from WorkSafeBC suggests the youngest workers in province’s construction industry are less inclined to wear hearing protection than their older colleagues. They are also less likely to protect their eardrums than young workers in other industries like manufacturing and primary resources.
WorkSafe BC says 24 per cent of construction workers younger than 22 years old don’t wear hearing protection. That compares to 13 per cent older than 50 going without and just 11 per cent in other age groups.
The data was mined from more than 160,000 hearing tests conducted by B.C. employers in 2016.
Sasha Brown, an occupational audiologist with WorkSafeBC, says noise-induced hearing loss “needs to be taken very seriously.”
“[Noise-induced hearing loss] damage may be painless, but it is irreversible and may go unnoticed for years or even decades until it reaches a point where it has a significant effect on one’s quality of life,” she said.
WorkSafe BC reports that, since 2006, there have been more than 37,000 accepted claims for noise-induced hearing-loss in B.C.
According to the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, employers have to provide hearing loss prevention programs, monitor noise levels and conduct annual hearing tests for workers exposed to hazardous noise.
Hazardous noise levels are defined as 85 decibels in the ‘A’ scale for eight hours or the equivalent; the A scale is used for measuring environmental noise.
“We want to raise the level of awareness among employers of the prevalence and seriousness of this occupational disease, as well as the need to have prevention programs and testing in place, so workers don’t have to live with its debilitating effects for the rest of their lives,” Brown says.
WorkSafeBC has online resources to assist in understanding and preventing noise-induced hearing loss: read this WorkSafeBC Bulletin, see A Guide to Hearing Loss Prevention Programs and watch The Hearing Video.
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