March 20, 2009

Spring is in the air! As temperatures rise and the sun begins to shine, we can now say good-bye to that white stuff we call snow. Most people are finding themselves to be more productive and now enjoying the outdoors again! It's motorcycle season again, so all those who procrastinated last season on their ear protection, here's an article for you. And just a reminder, Hearing Protection Ontario will be at the next bike show at the Exhibition place on March 28-29th for the National Motorcycle Show. Come check us out for a wide variety of custom made ear plugs to custom made ear phones for your motorcycles or communication needs.

Below is a link to an article written by: James R. Davis called  " Hearing Loss: Your helmet is inadequate defense"

http://www.msgroup.org/Tip.aspx?Num=150&Set=&SearchTerms=hearing

March 08, 2009

Special thanks to everyone who attended the National Heavy Equipment Show on March 5th and March 6th. The show was very interesting and exciting and a great success in spreading "hearing awareness". We were very pleased on the amount of interest and concern on hearing conservation and how many people are realizing the potential damage they are doing. It is never too late to protect your hearing, but there is nothing you can do when its gone.

Jan 12, 2009

Below is an interesting article regarding noise exposure in night clubs for anyone who is concerned about exposure limits. Please feel free to read the following article;

Noise at Work - New Responsibilites for Licensed Premises

October 26, 2008

“The Good News and Bad News on Hearing Loss”

I found some really interesting studies this past week and thought I should share. According to a presentation made in June at the International Society of Audiology Congress in Hong Kong and also published online by Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, smoking and excess weight (and occupational noise exposure) are risk factors for age-related hearing loss. But on the bright side of things, another study led by Erik Fransen of the University of Antwerp, in Belgium, found that moderate alcohol consumption (at least one drink per week) actually had a protective effect on hearing!

THE STUDY:

Involved 9 audiological centers in 7 European countries and 4083 participants between the ages of 53 and 67. The participants filled out questionnaires on their exposure to environmental risk factors and their medical history. Hearing tests were performed and the participants' pure-tone averages were adjusted for age and sex. The researchers analyzed the data in search of risk factors for hearing loss.

The collected data interestingly showed that smoking significantly increased hearing loss in frequencies

over 1000 Hz, with the degree of damage being dose-dependent. The effect of smoking on hearing remained significant even after cardiovascular disease was factored in.

A high body mass index (BMI) also correlated with increased hearing loss. And here's one for all you tall people: tall people were found to have better hearing on average, with a more pronounced effect at low frequencies! And moderate alcohol consumption was inversely correlated with hearing loss in both high and low frequencies.

And not to say we don't know already, but the research also confirms many earlier findings that exposure to noise contributes to hearing loss later on in life. Exposure to excessive noise is the major avoidable cause of permanent hearing loss worldwide, according to the world health organization. So why aren't we doing more to protect our vital sense? It is something that can be avoided if we took the proper measures and is something we would not want to loose.

In the article, the author (Erik Fransen) concluded, “Hearing loss has always been considered an inevitable part of aging, but more and more studies seem to indicate this is not necessarily true. Apparently a healthy lifestyle can be beneficial for hearing conservation at higher ages.”

October 6, 2008

Hello Everybody! I was recently reading through the article archives of a magazine named "The Hearing Journal" and came across an interesting article written by Karren Pallarito explaining some very key facts and information regarding hearing protection and protection awareness. For anyone who is interested in reading up on the article, I have included some main points of the article below. To read the article in full, please visit http://www.audiologyonline.com/theHearingJournal/pdfs/HJ2008_08_p17-22.pdf


"Hearing loss prevention goes mainstream, and every practitioner has a part to play" by karren Pallarito


       As a retired Army audiologist, Richard W. Danielson, PhD, manager of audiology and hearing conservation at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, does things by the book, and enforcing rules is no exception.
    
     "In the military, a range safety officer can tell a drill sergeant or a colonel, 'we're going to shut this range down if you don't have hearing protection available for your soldiers, plain and simple'" Danielson says.
    
      However, convincing members of his family to safeguard their hearing when using noisy machinery-even chainsaws-was an uphill battle. "Im from a farming family," he says, "so it was very frustrating for me to come back home and find such resistance to hearing protection and to hear them bluntly say, "Oh, it's okay; this noise won't hurt me.'"
      
      Noise-induced hearing loss remains a huge public health problem, affecting as many as 30 million Americans, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Studies show that people are not informed about the risks they face in everyday life. In one NIOSH survey, nearly a third of adults said that although they regularly use noisy equipment, such as lawnmowers and vaccum cleaners, they don't believe using these machines will damage their hearing.

      Even in regulated environments, people often fail to take appropriate measures. A NIOSH study published in 2002 found that only 41% of industrial workers exposed to hazardous noise levels wore hearing protection. In mining, where noise levels remains a significant problem, about 90% of coal miners have a hearing impairment by age 50.

     Yet, hearing health experts say noise-induced hearing loss is preventable if precautions are taken to avoid prolonged and excessive noise exposure. Getting that message out to the general public, especially children, is a central theme of recent hearing loss prevention compaigns. At the same time, governmental organizations, including the military, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, and NIOSH, are conducting research and sponsoring programs to prevent hearing loss before it begins.

PREVENTION BEFORE CONSERVATION

While the terms "hearing conservation" and "hearing loss prevention" are often used interchangeably, there's a subtle but important distinction, reflecting the evolution of the hearing conservation field.

    "Hearing conservation comes from the early 1980's, when the first Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) programs were coming online to deal with noise-induced hearing loss,"says Deanne Meinke, PhD, assistant professor of audiology and speech language sciences at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and president of the National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA), a multidisciplinary group of professionals dedicated to hearing prevention. "I think the view then was we had to conserve what they had left," she says.

    In March 2003, the American Speech- Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) adopted a new position statement recognizing audiologists' role in “the prevention of significant, permanent hearing loss resulting form on-off and off-the-job exposure to ototraumatic agents (most commonly noise).”

    Later that year, the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) issued a statement on preventing noise-induced occupational hearing loss, asserting, “No one needs to loose his or her hearing in order to ear a living.” The statement outlines best practices and, in closing, notes that the acdemy “supports audiologists leading the efforts to prevent occupational hearing loss through comprehensive programs.”

    “We want people to have an intuitive knowledge of what sounds are dangerous, what the consequeces of being exposed to those sounds are, and how to protect themselves so they apply them on their own in every situation. So, when they're in the workplace, their naural tendency is going to be to demand hearing protection.”

PREVENTION AT WORK

    Hearing loss prevention isn't just kids stuff. Researchers at NIOSH are tackling workplace prevention from every angle, beginning with a greater push to gather data on the incidence and prevalence of work-related hearing loss and the occurrence of hazardous noise exposure in occupational settings.

    Other goals of the institute's 2007-2016 research agenda are: to reduce noise through enginnering controls, to improve the use and effectiveness of personal protection devices, to establish evidence-based best practices for hearing loss prevention programs, and to identify hearing loss risk factors, such as individual susceptibility to noise and exposure to ototoxins.

    What's more, NIOSH is using health communication theory to develop training materials for workers on the use and proper fit their hearing protectors. Just as women make it a habit to get annual mammograms and motorists instinctively buckle up, NIOSH wants to empower workers to adopt behaviors to protect their hearing. “Words have impact and how you communicate the training message has a real impact, “ Stephenson notes.

    There are compelling reasons to teach adult workers, members of the armed forces, and veterans about preventing hearing loss. Quality of life, of course, is one. Money is another. From an occupational point of view, the sting of workers' compensation costs is helping spur interest in prevention. Nationally, occupational hearing loss costs an estimated $242.4 million annually in disbility alone, NIOSH reports.

    Employers really look toward hearing loss prevention programs as a way to impact those long-term costs,” Meinke says.

    For its part, the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) paid out $1.2 billion in compensation to veterans in fiscal year '06 for service-related hearing loss and tinnitus, says Stephen Fausti, PhD, director of the National Center for rehabilitative Auditory Research (NCRAR) in Portland, OR. “So prevention has some very profound economic issues associated with it,” he says, but adds, “You also have to think about quality of life in later years.”

    With that in mind, the NCRAR is collaborating with the US army on a multimedia educational program to be piloted at two military installations and the Portland DVA Medical Center. Soldiers and veterans will access computer modules that provide information about hearing, the damage that noise can inflict upon the auditory system and the importance of hearing protection. Participants will experience what it's like to have hearing loss and tinnitus via computer simulation and they'll self administer a screening examination to test their own hearing.