This trips up contractors who have worked in manufacturing. General industry sits under 1910.95, which sets an 85 dBA action level that triggers a full hearing conservation programme. Construction sits under 1926.52, whose permissible…
This trips up contractors who have worked in manufacturing. General industry sits under 1910.95, which sets an 85 dBA action level that triggers a full hearing conservation programme. Construction sits under 1926.52, whose permissible exposure limit is 90 dBA as an 8-hour average, with a requirement for a conservation programme when exposures exceed it. The practical consequence is that a crew can be legal under the construction standard at a level that would already have obliged a factory to act. Many contractors choose to test at the general industry trigger anyway, and we think that is the right call.
The first audiogram is the baseline every later one is measured against. A standard threshold shift is an average change of 10 dB or more at 2000, 3000 and 4000 Hz in either ear relative to that baseline. It is not a diagnosis of hearing loss. It is a signal that something changed and needs looking at - which may be noise, or may be wax, illness, or a bad test day. Retests resolve a good proportion of them.
A baseline audiogram must follow at least 14 hours without workplace noise exposure. Hearing protection can substitute, but a worker who wore plugs inconsistently through a shift is not a clean baseline. We will ask, and if the answer is uncertain we would rather rebook than record a baseline that permanently skews every future comparison against it.
Our booth meets the ambient noise limits in the standard for the frequencies tested, verified on site with a sound level meter before the first test of the day. If your site is loud enough that we cannot meet those limits where we are parked, we will move or come back - we will not run tests in an environment that makes the results meaningless and then hand you a compliant-looking record.
Primary regulations and standards referenced above. Where a standard is published commercially it is named in full rather than linked to a copy.