Hearing protection in everyday practice—The gap between expert knowledge and the beliefs of the users

Abstract

Many well-informed workers do not use hearing protectors (HPs) as they are taught to. Also, there are differences between what workers know, believe, and do. HPs are used whenever ‘‘necessary’’ and taken off when ‘‘the noise levels are low.’’ Workers know when the noise is measured at their workplace. However, when there is no feedback from these measurements, the noise levels will be regarded as being ‘‘all right.’’ Based upon their own noise rating scale, workers create their own norms for HP usage. By regarding their hearing as normal, even when they know their hearing is impaired, there is no incentive to use HP more often. The great disparity between the knowledge of the experts and the way workers use HP shows that the awareness of damage risk is low. Adaptation to noise and to hearing disability is tremendous! Thus, HP usage is determined by the worker’s own noise rating scale, by exchange of opinions between workers, and by their belief of having normal hearing, rather than by the objective noise measurements, information about the need of hearing protection and audiograms. Therefore, the hearing conservation procedures must be renewed according to modern pedagogic principles starting from the perspective of the users, not the experts.