Quality hearing protection

Hearing damage is a common issue in the construction sector. In fact, the construction industry ranks among the top 3 sectors with the highest incidence of work-related hearing damage.

Protecting your hearing can potentially lead to better health quality and contribute to optimal performance at work. With the right precautions, you can reduce or prevent issues such as hearing loss, tinnitus, and dizziness. Furthermore, promoting healthy hearing improves the quality of life, enhances productivity, and keeps construction projects on track.

One of the greatest challenges is that people generally underestimate when noise exceeds 80 dB. Workers usually perceive 80 dB as mildly noisy chatter and do not find it bothersome. Most people only find noise annoying when it goes above 90 dB. However, when working daily in an environment with such high noise levels, hearing protection measures help maintain good hearing quality.

Therefore, it is essential to prevent hearing damage and provide targeted information and protection to your employees against harmful noise at the construction site.

Excessive noise at the construction site can lead to permanent hearing damage. Even if an employee is only occasionally exposed to noise, short loud peaks can still result in hearing problems. Symptoms like tinnitus or temporary hearing loss may disappear, but not always.

In the dynamic world of construction, workers are surrounded by the vibrant sound of machines, drills, and saws. While these sounds are part of the daily routine, it is essential to be aware of their impact on hearing.

The good news is that, even in such a busy environment, it is possible to protect our ears and support their natural recovery. Though the consequences of persistent noise on our hearing may not always be immediately noticeable, we can take proactive measures to ensure the preservation of our hearing quality.

Many people in the construction industry use earmuffs and/or disposable earplugs. At first glance, it may seem like these provide adequate sound reduction. However, there are several disadvantages associated with them:

• Universal earplugs are not custom-fit. They tend to loosen continuously and may come out of the ear, or they can cause ear discomfort. Moreover, they are often either too large or too small, resulting in inadequate sound isolation. This is also known as “sound leakage.”
• Earmuffs heavily dampen all sounds. While they do protect your hearing in that sense, they also hinder workers from understanding each other or attenuate warning sounds, such as those from machines. This poses significant risks of workplace accidents or errors due to communication issues.

• Disposable earplugs will end up costing you much more money. And there are two reasons for this: firstly, they need to be replaced multiple times a day for hygienic reasons. Secondly, their effectiveness cannot be controlled or guaranteed, making the investment in this type of hearing protection less reliable. In principle, you need to use three pairs of disposable earplugs per day. We have observed that custom earplugs pay for themselves within a year.
• A common mistake is that construction workers wear earmuffs in combination with earplugs. They believe that by combining these forms of hearing protection in the construction industry, all environmental noises will be blocked out. As a result, colleagues can no longer understand each other properly. The only solution then is to take off the hearing protection when they want to discuss something. And therein lies the danger: even if you only remove your hearing protection on the construction site for a brief moment, it can be enough to cause hearing damage.

HearingCoach provides custom-made hearing protection specifically designed for the construction sector. Our earplugs offer 100% safety for your employees’ hearing, and here’s why:

• As mentioned earlier, your ears change over time. Therefore, it is essential to regularly check your employees’ ears to ensure that the custom earplugs fit perfectly. We adjust the hearing protection for the construction site if necessary. After measuring the hearing protection, HearingCoach even creates a 3D model of the ear impression. We store this 3D scan so that we can use it again in the future. After all, they are exact replicas of someone’s ears. This way, we ensure that the hearing protection is 100% customized for the construction industry.
• We also conduct a leak test as part of the fit verification process. This means we check whether the custom earplugs properly seal the ear canal and there is no leakage, preventing sound from reaching the hearing despite the hearing protection.

• In the construction industry, it is crucial for workers to be able to communicate with each other in the noise while still protecting their own hearing. For this reason, our custom earplugs for construction contain a special filter that allows for communication to remain possible. This prevents the temptation to remove the hearing protection on the construction site.
• Furthermore, it is also possible to stay connected with each other through custom-made hearing protection with Bluetooth capability. We would be happy to provide you with more information on this.
• Since employees wear the earplugs for the majority of the day, it is important for the earplugs to be comfortable and tailored to individual preferences. That’s why HearingCoach offers various types of earplugs, ensuring that the hearing protection is customized to fit each individual’s ear shape, personal needs, and other preferences such as color, wearing comfort, and design.