Listen Up: Protecting your hearing on the Job

Can you answer “YES” to one or more of the following?

▪After a day of work, does it sound like people are talking to you through a pillow or under water?

▪Do your ears ever feel “full” or “stopped up” after working near a loud noise?

▪Do they hurt at the end of a work day?

▪Are family members or roommates hollering at you to turn down the TV?

▪Is your spouse or significant other often accusing you of not listening?

If you identify with any of the first four questions, you may be suffering from hearing loss. If you answered “yes” to question 5, that could be hearing related. You may also be having relationship troubles, and that’s a whole other ball of wax (pun intended). One way to find out is to have your hearing checked at the free logger health exams being offered this spring through the Maine Logger Health and Safety Study (see schedule at the end

Hearing

Continued Page 32 of this article for dates and locations).

Hearing loss is permanent. Of the roughly 36 million American adults suffering from hearing loss, 10 million can be attributed to noise-induced hearing loss for short, NIHL. A one-time exposure to a loud sound - like a valve bursting on a hydraulic air pump - can cause NIHL. Also, repeated exposure at certain sound levels over an extended period of time can cause NIHL.

NIHL doesn’t just hurt your ability to hear, it can add stress to a relationship (see question 5) and recently was found to contribute to the early onset of dementia. It’s complicated. NIHL doesn’t just make everything seem quieter – it actually changes how you are able to hear sound frequencies. The sound of speech, for instance, is made up of a complex mixture of sound frequencies. With NIHL, a person’s inability to hear different frequencies can make another person’s words sound muffled or mushy and harder to understand. Background noise only make it worse. Often, people with NIHL think everyone else is mumbling (when it is really their own hearing that is not working properly). And, sadly, wearing a hearing aid and turning up the volume can’t fix that.

Tuning Out. Losing the ability to hear certain sound frequencies can also make something we all lovemusic - no longer enjoyable. Music can sound distorted, tinny, muddled, or “harsh.”

Sound damage to a person’s hearing can also cause tinnitus (ringing or a range of other noises in your ears or head). That’s a double whammy because, with tinnitus, you not only have trouble hearing what you want to hear, but you’re also hearing something you don’t want to hear. If you’re curious what it’s like to have tinnitus, you can listen to some examples at www.hear-it.org/impressions-ofhearing-loss-and-Tinnitus. (In short, it’s irritating.)

Can You Hear Me Now? Though you can’t restore your hearing once it’s lost, you can save what hearing you have if you wear the right hearing protection. If you haven’t had a hearing screening before, the 10minute screening can provide you a baseline measurement of your hearing levels. This gives you a marker by which you can measure if there are changes over time.

The exam is the first step. Next is to sit down with an occupational hearing specialist to review your results, the type of work you do and the type of exposures you work with both in terms of noise levels and duration of exposures. The occupational hearing specialists conducting exams for the Maine Logger Health & Safety Study are CAOHC certified and can provide guidance on task-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) with the most appropriate noise reduction ratings for your work based on your individual test results.

The study is a project of the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety in Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing. If you are a Maine logger interested in participating in the study, you can earn up to $250 in LL

Bean gift certificates and will be entered into a drawing to win one of seven $250 Visa gift cards. You can learn more on Facebook @MaineLoggerHealthandSafetyStudy or by calling 800-343-7527.

Decibel level exposures for common logging jobs:

Source: www.noisebuster.net/forestry.html

Free health exams, which include a hearing screening, are available to Maine loggers at the following dates and locations at right. All but the Logger’s Expo dates will be held at PLC Safety Trainings (see page 26 for detailed locations and times). Maine loggers receive a $25 gift card for participating. To schedule an appointment, call 800-343-7527 or email NEClogging@bassett.org