Noise is everywhere in our lives — especially when we work on a farm. Even so, your ears don’t discriminate between workplace sound and everyday noise. All of the sounds around you combine to cause problems that can be simply annoying in the short term and potentially deadly in the long term.
“Noise is not just annoyance, and it’s not just hearing loss. Actually, it affects your entire body,” said Marjorie McCullagh during an Agri-Safe webinar.
The professor emerita of nursing at the University of Michigan explained that hearing loss is the most common occupational disease. In fact, it’s so common that it’s often accepted as a normal consequence of work. You might not even realize how noisy working on a farm is, she cautioned. But a large majority of people report at least some ringing in their ears, or tinnitus, which is caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises.
“Often the ringing goes away, but the damage that was done by exposure to the sound does not,” McCullagh said. Tinnitus is a sign that you have damaged the hair cells of the inner ear, and there is no surgery or medicine that can fix this. “Once the loss is acquired, it’s irreversible,” she noted.
Any person, young or old, risks hearing loss when they are exposed to loud noises, she emphasized. Hearing loss can lead to further health problems because of its association with hypertension, obesity, heart disease, sleep, and cognitive functions. Hearing loss has also been shown to be strongly associated with dementia.
In addition to physical issues, noise-induced hearing loss reduces a person’s quality of life due to potential impaired communication and social isolation. It can also lead to a lower ability to monitor the work environment safely and lost productivity.
Make it a priority
Despite these impacts, many people are not concerned about losing their hearing or think it is only a concern for older people, McCullagh said. Noise is often correlated with power, fun, and entertainment. One study found that half of farm youth had some level of noise-induced hearing loss by the time they reached high school.
“I challenge you to think about what the cost of noise might be in your life,” McCullagh urged. Are you prepared for the physical problems, financial concerns, mental strain, and social issues losing hearing will cost you?
Using hearing protection is your best bet against developing hearing loss. It will also lower your risk of hypertension, fatigue, heart attack, and weight gain, McCullagh said. Consider how maintaining your hearing will also help you function better in group settings and maintain your relationships.
The best choice for hearing protection is the one you will wear, McCullagh said. She encouraged farm workers to experiment with different styles of earplugs, earmuffs, or headphones to find what works for you. She also noted that farm workers will be exposed to different kinds of noise throughout the day, and they will require different protection. For example, noise-cancelling headphones work best for low tone noises, and much farm work occurs with higher tones.
A major barrier to wearing hearing protection is the fear of not being able to hear safety concerns going on around you. To that, McCullagh said, “If you don’t wear hearing protection, you’re going to lose your ability to hear those sounds anyway.” She encouraged the use of other cues with equipment, such as checking gauges and monitoring function.
To know when to wear hearing protection, there are a number of smartphone apps that can measure decibel levels. A general rule of thumb is to wear hearing protection when noise is over 85 decibels. But McCullagh offered an even simpler option: if you are less than an arm’s length away from someone and need to raise your voice to be heard, hearing protection is probably warranted.
