Abstract:

Industrial safety and health personnel and professionals with various backgrounds often have to make decisions as to the potential correlations between populations' and individuals' hearing characteristics for either an assumed or known on-the-job noise exposure and either an assumed or known off-the-job noise exposure. The recently published ANSI S3.44 standard provides an additional tool in making these types of decisions. This paper will present several case history examples of using ANSI S3.44 in judging the level of protection that had been provided by the company's hearing conservation program for the noise exposed population. The paper will also present the expected changes over time in the hearing of a population or an individual (using a more-likely-than-not judgment criterion).