In October 1956 the U.S. Air Force established a formal hearing conservation program that employs threshold monitoring audiometry. A hearing conservation data registry was also established to study and accumulate hearing data of military and civilian personnel who routinely work in noise. Recent revisions of this program have resulted in increased emphasis on hearing conservation studies and evaluations. The authors report the result of one segment of this study—the annual audiometric monitoring of 26 446 personnel (22 817 military and 3629 civilian employees) during January through March 1975. The data derived from this study are reported separately for military and civilian employees and for right and left ears using threshold-averaging techniques. For example, comparisons are reported for average hearing at 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz (speech frequency average) with averages for 1000, 2000, and 3000 Hz (procedure proposed by Working Group 77 of NAS-NRC Committee on Hearing, Bioacoustics, and Biomechnics) and 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hz (procedure proposed by Occupational Safety and Health Act). Results of the study are summarized and discussed.
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