Hearing Conservation & Prevention: How Hearing Shifts Still Happen

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In this episode, we talk about hearing conservation, sound surveys, dosimeter testing, and hearing protection in a way that feels practical, honest, and real. A good hearing conservation program is not just about handing out earplugs or checking the OSHA compliance box — it is about understanding the actual noise employees are exposed to, choosing the right hearing protection PPE, and making sure the program works for real people doing real jobs.

We cover common gaps that can affect a company’s hearing program, including wireless earbuds worn under earmuffs, off-the-job noise exposure from concerts or sporting events, poorly timed audiogram testing, dirty work environments that affect PPE use, and the risk of overprotecting employees in areas where hearing protection may not be needed. The goal is simple: protect people’s hearing without creating new safety problems along the way. 

Key Points

•  A strong hearing conservation program should include accurate sound surveys, dosimeter monitoring, proper hearing protection, and consistent audiogram testing. 
• Sound surveys and noise dosimeter testing need to reflect real work conditions, including different shifts, tasks, equipment use, cleanup, blow-off, and production changes. 
•  Wireless earbuds under earmuffs can create hidden noise exposure because employers cannot control how loud employees are listening to music, podcasts, or other audio. 
•  Off-work noise exposure — like concerts, football games, rodeos, monster truck rallies, hunting, or shooting clays — can affect hearing test results, especially if audiograms are scheduled too soon afterward. 
•  The right hearing protection PPE is not always the highest-rated option. It needs to match the actual noise level, job task, comfort needs, hygiene concerns, and employee use. 
• Noise Reduction Rating, or NRR, matters when selecting earplugs or earmuffs, but overprotecting employees can make it harder to hear alarms, radios, equipment, forklifts, or coworkers. 
•  Hearing protection should be practical. If PPE is uncomfortable, dirty, hard to use, or not realistic for the job, employees may wear it incorrectly or avoid using it altogether. 
•  Calibration matters. Sound meters and dosimeters need to be properly calibrated so the data behind the hearing conservation program is reliable. 
•  Engineering controls should be considered whenever possible to reduce workplace noise before relying only on PPE. 
•  The heart of a good hearing program is protecting people’s hearing for life — at work and beyond. 

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Transcript

Why Hearing Programs Still Fail

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, welcome back, everybody. This week we are going to be talking about hearing protection and hearing conservation. Say what?

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Let's go. Let's listen.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

All right, welcome back to the channel.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome back, everybody. I am so sorry for that cheesy joke. That's pretty good at that.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Let's listen. All right. So, for those of you don't know, uh, we don't really do it today, but for years and years and years. So many. That's how I built the company. Third of my year doing sound surveys and decimeters.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

And it's not as exciting as hazmatic of fine space, but pay the bills.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

No kidding.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

I'm bringing it up to you because this episode is about if you do the sound survey right and you do the decimeter right, and you do the PPE right, and you're doing the audit audiograms and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Now you're having an injury.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Now you're having it recordable. This episode is about figuring that out.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yep. All right. All right, let's dive in.

Earmuffs, Earplugs, And Hidden Earbuds

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Let's first let's start with this beautiful frozen PPE that I want to.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Maybe it's too loud. I have a small head. I have a small head.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

All right, so we have that one and I have the spider.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

We just learned that your head's back.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, so this is the Spider-Man version. I think mine is rated higher than hers. This is a PPE, but at some plants, they wear this stuff to stay warm. In some plants, they want to turn up the music, or you could do it your way, which is what.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah. So I don't like, generally speaking, having headphones or earmuffs. And that is an option. I like to have the earplugs.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

And there's all different versions of that. However, something that we've seen as a trend is there are now wireless earbuds. And what you can do is you can put those wireless earbuds in and have muffs over them. Your earbuds are at whatever decimal you want.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Or you can wear an Allen Safety hoorag and you can cover it up and look like a bandana because you don't want to have it for your hard hat and mess with your hair.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So at a lot of the locations, we have a bandana or something like this, or even if it's cold, you might have an ear warmer or a winter hat on. Now I can put those earbuds in and I can take the little string and I can shove my hearing protection up inside that so it looks like I'm wearing it.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

But I have But I'm listening to an L C D podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah. Or you know, whatever. So that's something that you want to evaluate is that maybe something that goes on, and we have absolutely no control over the sound level that they're listening to that on. Now, a giveaway is how often those folks are fiddling with their phones. That could be a giveaway, but again, that's only if we happen to be walking by or we see it or we look that way and we catch it. It may be something that is discreet. And you know what? It may be something that they get whatever playlist or podcast list going on a break and they just leave it alone. And so we may not know it all.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

So it's a work-related injury, but not really.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, because we're not able to manage that volume. That's

Weekend Noise Ruining Monday Audiograms

SPEAKER_01 3:11

right.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

All right. The next one is I love Sundays. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Okay. And the Monster Truck Rally.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

It's Monster Truck Rally. They're noisy. That's the only reason our son's not been to one yet, they're too noisy. They're loud, yeah. All right. Uh, a football game. Yeah, Kansas City fans. Guess what? We have the loudest.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, loudest stadium there is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Sunday, Sunday night. And then you know what we also have here. Rodeos are loud. Rodeos are loud. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I remember bringing our daughter to the first one, and I had to get little earmuffs for her because it was so loud in there. If you've been to like a PBR event or anything like that, it's loud at the time.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Oh, that's on Sunday. Now, Monday you come to work. Oh, we had the hearing booth here today. Yeah. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna be conveniently.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Or I was I was practicing duck hunting, so you know, I'm skeet shooting or whatever. All day Sunday. Shooting clays all weekend long.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So now Monday at 9 a.m. is my turn. My ears are ringing. Oh, yeah. I'm like, dee, dee, dee. I'm just hitting the button, whatever. So now it comes back. I have this massive hearing loss. Yeah, you gotta be. Did I really? Or did I just overexpose it the night before and I didn't get so from or do I have an ear infection?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Or do I have you know something going on with my ears from like a sinus standpoint or whatever? My ears get clogged when I have sinus issues. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

So I try not to do any of the testing on a Monday after you know there's events on Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Because every town knows there's stuff going on. Don't schedule it Tuesday, give your ears time to relax, basically, so you get a better test.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

You're not start, I think they had a shift, and now we have to do this, and you start this whole lot of management time dedicated to something that's yeah, that's not really an issue. Had you waited a couple days, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

So that's that's two of them now.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Well, and truly, you know, you could even, if you are in an area where seasonal allergies are really problematic, that may be something also that you want to look at. If you know every single person either they're hacking or coughing or super congested from allergies, maybe you don't schedule the audiograms that week, you know.

Fit, Comfort, And Contamination Problems

SPEAKER_00 5:07

The next one is is that you give me hearing protection. I yes, and I I do not like it at all. So you give me this. So here's an example.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

He's really picky about his PPE, which I find I find irritating because I'm of the person that like I don't want anybody to be bothered. Like, if it's the correct NRR, I'm just gonna wear it. I don't want to cause a seat. He's like, this hurts my head, this hurts my ears. I'm gonna get a rash.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

I'm in a hog barn, I'm in a mill, I'm in rendering. Yeah, I don't want to be like touching it until I get my hands clean to put it in there and go and put it in there.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Well, sometimes they fall in the case.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

I like the con to do an insert because if they fall out, at least I'm not putting grossness in my hair. Yeah, you know, so yeah, they're usually blue. Because now I'm like, I don't want to put it in all. So I'm just barely gonna do enough to make it barely say so it looks like I'm protected, not really, yeah. Because I don't want that nastiness in there.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

You gotta look at the selection people can change whether people want to wear it or not and how they're gonna wear it for the jobs they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Well, up to and including, like if the hearing protection falls out. I mean, most of us put it on a hard hat. I think that's pretty accepted, like that's what everyone's doing. So if it falls out and it's down your back, well, is stuff dripping on you? Yeah, I mean, if you're walking on a harvest floor and you're having to cut through some of the stuff, it can get dripped on. It can't get dripped on. That's right. So, or depending on your rendering, you got leaks, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

So that's a few of them. Now, here's the

Overprotecting Can Reduce Safety

SPEAKER_00 6:38

other thing. Here's my last one. Last one. Ready. You should not be adding PPE if it's not needed. Because it can actually make a risk. And we see that sometimes. We'll see, like, well, this entire room, because of our hearing program, everyone must wear hearing protection. Yeah, but it's never above 85 there. What'll happen is you go in and it's so quiet, not everybody they can't hear things. Like, for example, your evacuation alarms, your radios, all these things are set for certain decimal points. Yeah, and if you're making it so low it's hard to hear, you're changing that environment. I can't hear the risk around.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

So let's have a conversation of you know, just how we even select it. So noise reduction rating, there's a reason why it's rated that it's a math equation. And so all hearing protection is not just select one that looks good, right? And then we use that. A lot of times also the coloring tells me immediately what the NRR rating is when I walk up to it. So I'm like, that's too low. Like, that's not that's not high enough noise reduction rating for how loud I perceive it to be. And you know, you can get a pretty rough estimate if you've done this long enough to like, oh, this is for sure 90. Like, we are in the 90s for sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

You know, the whole rule

NRR Basics And Smarter Noise Surveys

SPEAKER_00 7:55

of thumb is if you're within three feet talking, it's over 90.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Yeah, yeah. You're over and that's not perfect math, but it gives you an idea of like, hey, we need to probably look at this. So take it. First, we're doing engineering stuff if we can, because there's also the opportunity to increase efficiencies and production from that standpoint, you know, makes it more enjoyable. Maybe get out some PP, there's some cost there, or at least change it a little bit. But again, just having done sound surveys, you've got to watch that you are getting a good sample across all the shifts you have employees working because if the activity's 7 30 in the morning, yeah, air is loud. Yeah, when we're doing blow-offs of the equipment, and a lot of times it's straight line air and it shouldn't be, but it is.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

So the survey was taken at 7:30.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

That's right. So we don't we want to make sure that it's representative of all the activities that we're having people do that have a change in the noise during the 24-hour cycle or whatever that looks like. So that's the biggest thing. And then calibration, and the reason why a lot of truly the reason why we don't do a lot of this stuff anymore is because flying, yeah, it's hard to travel with that and maintain the calibration. Well, that matters, so we should be asking for certificates and making sure all that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I I was doing this a few weeks after 9-11. And the the National Guard was really excited to open the case and saw these red boxes and black wires coming out of them. And it took a long time to expense them not to mess with it, so we mess with calibration. It's really, yeah, it's expensive. Yeah, it's expensive.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

And if they knock it out of calibration, like you can't use it now. So you were going to work and now you can't do the job task. So it's just making sure that we have a good understanding when we write our hearing conservation programs, that it makes sense, the frequency, when we're doing the testing, and then we are having a plan of when do we do disymmetry stuff based on whatever we're finding out and that all that dovetails really nicely together. So if

Calibration, Sampling, And Practical Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_01 9:52

you want more information on some of that stuff, you can give us a call. We can help you out with some of that. If you want to support us, like, share, subscribe. That's all stuff that doesn't cost you anything, but it's a huge difference to us. The only reason why we're doing this, we want the information to get to those who don't know, haven't heard it, and that they need it. And we want to make sure that they're aware that there's a resource out there to help them if they don't feel comfortable asking the question. And then if you want to go beyond that, we do have the Allen Dash Safety.com merchandise tab that has a whole bunch of selections of safety merchandise. So kind of fun stuff. Kind of something for everybody there. We've got shower curtains, we've got rugs for your office, snow gloves, coffee cups. And then if you feel more comfortable from Amazon, we've got an Amazon store too. So you can check it out over on Amazon if you want to buy from there because you've got saved payments, all that good stuff, just ease of use. So we appreciate you helping. We appreciate it. Take care, and we will see you next time. Stay safe, everybody.