Construction Informer

The Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America has a hearing damage page at their site. You can click on various noise producers like normal conversation or jack hammer and see the decibels (dB) that are produced by that activity. It’s surprising to see that a spray painter actually peaks at a higher dB than a lawn mower.

But there’s much more here. They site things like the fluidity of construction activities, the outdoor effects on sound, and the movement of big noise producers (earth moving equipment) as particularly troublesome noise control issues for builders.

The surprising thing is that rather than issuing ear plugs and other hearing protective gear they insist control needs to be focused on engineering and administrative efforts first. The standard they say is for ear protection to be provided when dB exceed 85, or shouting becomes necessary in order to communicate. But that should be the last resort.

Here are some of the things they see as the best ways to reduce the danger of sound to workers’ hearing.

• Use quieter processes – boring is quieter than pile driving;
• Buy quieter equipment – noise levels go down as equipment gets newer and there are some noise cutting saw blades that can cut the noise levels in half;
• Modify older equipment with new mufflers and sound absorbing materials;
• Maintain equipment because when it is well maintained the noise levels can be reduced by up to 50 percent;
• Locate noisy equipment as far away as possible;
• Use temporary barriers to reduce noise.

According to the Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia, Canada, eight percent of all hearing loss claims are attributable to construction activities. And while other high risk industries like sawmills are seeing drops in hearing loss claims those in construction are not falling. Most telling is that the studies behind this report found hand tools and other machinery caused background noise levels to exceed 80 dBA which is high enough to exceed Canada’s occupationally acceptable noise limits.

The University of Washington did a five-year study on noise-induced hearing loss in the construction sector focused on noise-induced permanent threshold shift (NIPTS). The issue with NIPTS is that it progresses unnoticed until it starts to interfere with communication. This study nearly matched the Canadian study by finding that construction workers averaged 85 dBA noise exposure in 70 percent of the shifts using the NIOSH exposure standard. Using the less restrictive OSHA standards 30 percent of the shifts were exposed to the same levels. The research uncovered the fact that while the use of hearing protection could provide adequate noise reduction, workers only used it 20 percent of the time they were exposed to noise levels over 85 dBA.

It may seem like there is no end to the kinds of injuries we can do to ourselves while we work. So much of the reasons we do things unsafely comes down to money and profits. It takes too long to put on the right gear. Or, it costs too much to do it another way. Or, we won’t get the job if we have to build in too much expense for safety. In the end we will endlessly create human disabilities and escalating long-term health care costs if we don’t change the way we think and act about safety on our jobs.