Page 58 - Occupational Health & Safety, May 2017

HEARING PROTECTION
How to Choose the Most Effective Hearing Protection?
Decision makers must consider that in many cases, workers have to wear hearing protection for eight hours. BY TABATHA CIRGENSKI
54 Occupational Health & Safety | MAY 2017
www.ohsonline.com
Selecting the right hearing protection is not always an easy task. One of the most im- portant duties that a safety manager has is to choose the right protection, one that employees will wear 100 percent of the time they are exposed to noise. Factoring in cost and usage is also important; most companies spend on average 30 cents per person per day on hearing devices, such as dispos- able ear plugs. Investing in a more cost-effective and efficient form of hearing protection is ideal.
There is a plethora of options on the market, but selecting the protector most appropriate to your needs and the needs of your workers will help ensure the ad- aptation of this device. So one may ask, “Which hear- ing protection is the right protection?” Well, the an- swer to that is actually quite easy—the best protection allows for these four benefits: It is comfortable, allows for communication, is convenient, and is eco-friendly.
Here are four of the most common hearing protec- tion devices on the market:
■ Custom ear plugs
■ Disposable ear plugs
■ Ear muffs
■ Reusable ear plugs
Discover how each device compares to the oth-
ers and the benefits they bring to the individual user. Here are the top four factors to consider when choos- ing a device:
#1. Comfort:
The hearing protector “is forgotten.”
The more comfortable the device, the more likely your employees are to forget they are wearing hearing pro- tection. But what is comfort?
■ The employee is free to move.
■ The protector is lightweight, discreet.
■ The ear plug is comfortable to wear and per-
fectly adapted to the morphology of each ear. Decision makers must consider that in many cas- es, workers have to wear hearing protection for eight hours. Having a device that does not fit properly will force workers to remove the protection from their ears, thus exposing them to dangerous levels of noise at various points throughout their work shift. Comfort is
Billion Photos/Shutterstock.com