So what should we do about it?

First of all I think we need a new paradigm. We need to focus less on compliance and OSHA and more on how we can maintain functional hearing health over our worker’s careers. This change is reflected in the chart as “Wellness” instead of “Compliance.”

Additionally, we must agree that each worker has a significant responsibility for their protecting their own hearing health. The quality of our hearing health in our senior years is a function of many things, but it cannot be ignored that our life-style choices and attitudes about self-protective behavior play a very important role. We need to put emphasis on early identification of workers at risk; we need to look at self-help, safety culture, early intervention at the first sign of problem, and managing this whole thing as a business process so we know if we are really working on the right things and whether we are achieving the important outcomes.