Consider for a moment that Human Hearing should be considered as a "Life Asset". Audition is critical for human communication. Without hearing, or with a hearing impairment, the social fabric of life may be severely unraveled. Because of hearing loss, social gatherings become less appreciated or completely unmanageable. Ideas and exchanges flow less freely when auditory reception is impaired. Warnings may go unnoticed. Music unappreciated. Family and friends avoided. On the job, machinery and co-worker status may go unheeded. These "losses" are recognized by almost all who are involved in hearing conservation. However, the public and the noise-impacted worker appear not to place the same value in their sense of hearing. At least, until normal hearing is seriously compromised.
If noise were as obviously damaging as radiation, would we change our opinion of the danger of noise? If noise hurt us, how would we view noise exposures? First, we would probably monitor all the noise in our environment carefully and often. We would quickly learn to predict the situations in which the noise would cause injury. The sources of the noise hazard would be under constant examination. We would make every attempt to shield ourselves and others. At every turn, we would consider alternatives that did not place us in harm's way.
If we were an employer with a noisy work environment, we would monitor our workers via the best and most predictable methods of managing this potential noise damage. We would make our workers wear noise exposure meters at all times, but we would not necessarily always depend upon the exposure meter pinned to them. Our tests would involve appropriate assessment of the underlying health of those exposed. We would attempt to determine the pre-employment damage of all potential employees in order that we could unarguably plot any progression in that damage. And, we would seek methods of prediction that are as accurate as possible. We would have incorporated each and every advance in the science that occurred. We would make sure that our prevention programs were up to date in every aspect of that science.
Wouldn't we become obsessive about protection? Perhaps we would offer that protection which was proven to protect the worker without the protector burdening the employee in any manner. The cost of the protector would become less important when compared to the asset being protected. Short term costs would be contrasted with long term benefits at every turn. And, those benefits would include most all of the "human factors" that affect the quality of life of those exposed workers.
If all efforts failed to prevent damage to our ears, we would likely make attempts to repair, "fix", or otherwise seek adequate compensation for the damage that occurred. The value we place in the hearing asset would dictate, at least partially, the value we seek as replacement. And the value would be assessed in terms of the loss to the our entire life situations.
Is there any health asset that is any more important to "normal human function" than communication? Are we, as individuals, employers, employees, and as a society doing all we can to protect this delicate function? If noise is a part of your life, you'd better protect your hearing.
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