The failure to regulate industrial noise is a scandal that will someday rock the country. In 1968, outgoing Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz drew up a regulation specifying a maximum noise exposure of 85 decibels that would have to be met by industries with government contracts in excess of $10,000. Industry regarded this proposal as extremely restrictive, and got the ear of the new Secretary of Labor, George Schultz. He established a review committee consisting primarily of representatives of industry, and medical men and others friendly to industry. The final number adopted was 90 decibels, instead of 85. It is claimed that ten per cent of the work force will lose its ability to hear the spoken word under these "improved" provisions. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing who that ten per cent will be until they start to lose their hearing. Even then this will go undetected unless there is an on-going hearing testing program, something unlikely in the small factories that employ 80 per cent of the work force of the nation.
Even Fortune Magazine (October 1969) was critical of the new regulations, pointing out that millions of workers in plants with fewer than 20 workers and less than $10,000 in contracts would be excluded, and that the 90 dB(A) noise limit was "5 dB(A) more than the experts regarded as safe."
One would have imagined that after the 1948 Slawinski case, industry would have embarked on a program of all-out noise control. After all, in that historic ruling the courts for the first time recognized that noise-induced hearing loss was compensable. And industry was petrified, fearful of an avalanche of lawsuits. The period immediately following that historic decision was called "the industrial noise crisis."
But instead of reducing its noisy status quo, industry embarked on a program of noise liability reduction that was quite analogous to a program of reducing noise complaints instead of noise.
Physicians developed a category of hearing loss called "hearing impairment." This was an extreme degree of hearing loss, and it was further qualified in workmen's compensation laws to meet a medico-legal definition of liability. Special conditions of exposure had to be met before a case of deafness, as defined, could be charged to on-the-job exposure.
The compensation criteria are worth examining. The first rule is that the employee must have worked a certain number of years in employment exceeding arbitrary "damage-risk" noise levels, usually 8 hours a day above 85 decibels.
For purposes of disability compensation, the damage must be so extensive as to seriously impair hearing for speech. Only a hearing impairment as officially defined is recognized as a disability.
Under the New York State Workmen's Compensation Law, to qualify for an award, not only must the hearing show a loss below 2,000 cps, but that loss must be substantial.
Industry's 2,000 cps bare-bones-of-speech criterion appears harsh even for workers, let alone the general population. How harsh is revealed by the case of a man in New York City, who worked for 44 years in the noisy pressroom of a newspaper at exposure over the damage-risk level, but could not qualify for compensation. Though three specialists diagnosed his hearing loss as severe, it was in the 4,000 cps range, and not 2,000 cps and under. So though his loss, according to the three otologists, handicapped his ability to hear all of the sounds of speech, especially some consonant sounds, he was not deaf by definition. Insurance companies and industry, influential in developing the medico-legal definitions of deafness, decide how much speech one may hear in this world.
If a worker has lost his hearing and wishes to file a claim, he must separate himself from his noisy job and wait six months. Having to wait six months discourages claims; it also encourages workers to delay making any claims until they retire. Many workers would rather knowingly grow deaf and continue working than leave for six months of idleness or transfer to a quiet but undesired job, probably with a loss of seniority and pay. "It is very unusual for a man to leave a noisy job to preserve his hearing," said a member of the Halifax Labor Department. The total number of hearing loss claims processed in the United States is relatively small; it is estimated that fewer than 500 cases were settled in 1966.
The worker who is able to separate himself from his noisy job for six months and prove he has lost a substantial amount of his hearing below 2,000 cps doesn't get too much for his pains. The states that do recognize noise-induced hearing loss set a limit on weekly payments, plus a limit on the number of weeks for which payments will be made. Michigan grants a maximum award of $28,500 for total loss of hearing in both ears, while Nebraska awards only $3,700 for the same amount of damage. For living the balance of your life unable to hear much human speech, New York State will award you a maximum weekly benefit of $80 for 60 weeks for one ear, 150 weeks for two.
There are some small touches of humanity. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, if a deafened worker has suffered a minimum of a specified noise exposure he must wait out the six months—but is entitled to a hearing aid plus reimbursement for batteries while waiting.
It is easy to understand why some experts argue that city noise will not make one deaf, if one knows that in a factory, too many minutes away from an excessively noisy machine may disqualify the operator from eventual compensation. According to theory, any temporary escape from damaging noise allows the damaged ears to recuperate. A leading industrial noise control engineer alerts employers to observe how often an employee escapes his noisy environment: "Inconspicuous interruptions could easily occur in what might appear to be a continuous exposure due to lunch periods, coffee breaks, washroom visits, occasional stoppage of machinery, etc." The sharp-eyed factory manager can reduce workmen's compensation claims not by reducing the noise level but by keeping a careful record of how much coffee his operators drank, how many cigarettes they smoked, and how often they went to the restroom.
An insurance company acoustician laughed when I told him someday construction workers would be getting workmen's compensation for hearing loss. He believes that he could prove that since the jackhammer is not operating continuously, or the operator is sometimes away from his equipment, the deafened worker could not substantiate his claim. However, government research has already shown hearing loss in road construction workers.