Hearing Conservation 29 CFR 1910.95

General Background:

Approximately 16 million workers are exposed to excessive on-the-job noise levels on an annual basis. In addition to causing hearing loss by destroying the inner ear, noise can put stress on other parts of the body causing fatigue and unnecessary psychological stress. This preventable added burden to the body can result in increased injury rates. This poses a serious problem for exposed workers and their employer. The OSHA Occupational Noise Exposure Standard establishes uniform requirements to make sure that the noise hazards associated with all U.S. workplaces are evaluated, and that the hazards associated with high noise are transmitted to all affected workers so that mitigation measures can be instituted.

The following course outline is designed to make employees aware of the hazards associated with noise hazards.

I. Hearing Program

A. Why people receive training about hearing conservation
B. The threshold for safe occupational noise exposure
C. Basic components for all hearing conservation

II. Hearing and Noise

A. The major adverse health effects caused by noise
B. How the ear receives and processes
C. Common Sources
1. Industrial Machinery
2. Woodworking machinery
3. Construction Equipment
4. Aircraft

III. Monitoring / Testing

A. Purpose of noise monitoring
B. Purpose of audiogram

IV. Protection
A. How employers can protect employees from over exposure to noise
B. Precautions to take to reduce risk of exposure
C. Procedures for exposure incident response, clean-up, and post-exposure evaluations

NOTE: CSEM, Inc. may be contacted in the future to schedule a work place evaluation and program review in an effort to help maintain compliance with this regulation. This segment of the OSHA requirement can be easily documented by the employer and is not included in this proposal but will be mentioned in training.