What is health surveillance in noise assessment?
The Noise Regs say that anyone who exposed to a noise risk level of over 85 dB(A) in a noise assesment, without taking the effect of hearing protection into account, should then fall into an ongoing health surveillance programme. What that means in effect is on-site hearing tests.
Who does the need for noise health surveillance apply to?
The noise assessment should identify this for you but there are some grey areas. The HSE, in L108, say that anyone who is regularly exposed to noise levels over the 85 dB(A) point are included, but that doesn’t automatically mean every single person who goes into the higher noise risk area.
For example, if an office person occasionally goes in to speak to someone to to look at a machine and they need to wear hearing protection for that, they do not ‘regularly’ exceed the daily exposure limits so would fall outside of the need for hearing testing
Health screening vs health surveillance
The two terms are used interchangeably by normal people, but do have slightly different meanings. Health screening means undertaking a hearing test and looking how that person compares to normal results for their age and sex. Health surveillance is that but with medical oversight and importantly as part of an ongoing programme.
The Noise Regs require health surveillance, so mean it is an ongoing programme, not a one-off.
What will on-site health surveillance entail?
Inside a mobile hearing testing van for health surveillance
Someone will come to your site, usually in some form of mobile clinic, and do the testing there for you. Your people go to their van, go through a hearing health history review, get an otoscopic examination (visual check of the ear drum) and then the ‘hear beep press button’ audiometry test. The result will then be explained to them.
The client then gets a report of who is OK and who needs any follow-up action. That may be a further doctor’s review, or a recommendation to see their own GP if the issue is nothing to do with noise, etc.
We used to do hearing testing but that is now undertaken by Aardvark Health.
Pitfalls to watch out for
Self-testing kits
There are companies out there offering to rent employers a ‘hearing test in a box’ but they are crap, frankly, and completely non-compliant with the British Standard for hearing testing or the British Society of Audiology’s procedure for screening audiometry.
There is no on-site daily verification check (not the annual calibration, a check before the start of every session).
There is no otoscopic (visual) examination of the ear so it could be blocked, infected, etc.
People put their own headphones on. It sounds silly but this is a real no-no, people position headphones for comfort rather than ensuring the speaker is placed properly and directly over the ear canals.
There is no oversight of the test as it runs and people do get it wrong, every day, from the random button pressers to the overly hesitant.
Everyone gets the same meaningless ‘a Category 2 result means this’ nonsense statement.
Office-based testing
Conducting hearing tests in an office or meeting room, either with a self-test kit or done by a Technician, is often pretty poor. If you can hear any music, telephones, speech, etc. then the test will be interfered with as those are precisely the tones being tested.
Often companies talk about noise-reducing headsets but that’s nonsense to be honest, they don’t do much and every heating testing company uses those as standard anyway these days.
