Hi all, thanks for posting replies and I’ll be following up! I tend to be slow but don’t feel like I give up on you all.
@Raudrive I do have ear mold with my HA. The ear mold I have is like one of these - link.
However due to what I was told by the safety guy at work, they claimed that with HA and ear mold the sound will pass through and still cause hearing damage. I don’t think that’s right, myself but however I’ll point out something like if I’m several feet away from the machines I’m running from, I can’t tell if they are running or not so I have to keep looking at it just to be sure they are still running. Now that I’m without the HA, I don’t ear much at all of them.
Another thing that they mentioned was the area that I’m working in is like 84.5 or near 85 dBA, and working in that area for 12 hours even though I have three 15 mins breaks, one of the 30 min lunch, so I’m not always exposed to that area when I leave out of it, I’m still required.
These are the ear plug that we’re required to wear as work provide them: Honeywell Laser Lites
Even though since I don’t hear everything from a machine when I’m away, they don’t want to get fined by OSHA just for wearing a HA and a particular ear mold somehow because they keep telling me it’s unacceptable for what I have, and strictly tell me to wear earplug/earmuff. I don’t think they and OSHA is aware of such, that’s why I’m here.
@jim_lewis I’ll be sure to send efigalaxie a PM, more likely in reference to this post. I’d also want to answer any question if possible so his questions would possibly be answered here. I’ll also check out his posts too.
And yes, OSHA still want hearing protection regardless of how much hard of hearing I am. They will not allow anyone to sign a wavier to reduce the need of equipment and increased difficulty of hearing. I’ll explain what’s difficult when wearing the ear plugs: I’m not able to hear conversations very well with just my CI alone, and not able to hear well of the machines from the CI too. At least with the CI I can hear forklift beeps and other safety warning beeps, but when it comes to performance wise I’m not able to go up to par. [I’ve been having hearing loss since I was a kid, so the loss was already there before I started working at this manufacturing job which was 1 year ago.]
@Raudrive If I’m not clear, I’m sorry. I’m trying my best. While I do wear a CI and HA on a regular basic, OSHA/Work will not let me wear both at work in certain of area in the building due to loud noise for a 12 hour job. I’ve already talked with Work and Audiologist about finding a solution, Work was trying to give me just the earmuff and I can’t work with that. The Audiologist told me to wear the ear plugs and just the CI and that’s what I’m doing now. I’m having difficulty performing well at work with just that because a lot of things are sound-dependent especially in communications and only like 2 people I know of can do sign language, and no one else write things down for me to read and respond back.
I’ll take a look at the PDF file, this one is new to me. [Edit: Actually, I saw Jim mentioning that it doesn’t block all sounds especially high frequencies…]
So for the OSHA Approved HA’s, somehow the words are getting around between work and my audiologist saying OSHA do not approve how HA operate and deny them like they do not protect the hearing. I’m wanting to find ways to have HA available that works with OSHA standards, which OSHA do not provide already because there are none it seem.
@jim_lewis I can’t wear headphones because my ears are really sensitive. For example, I have a very lightweight headphone at home for use, and I can’t use it for any longer than 1 hour without it hurting my ear. I’ve tried many different kinds of headphones through amazon and other places and I never found one that works for me. The earmuff work was trying to provide for me not only fit just the ear, but it sit on top of the HA and CI so it’ll squeeze those onto my head making me sore. With that muting the CI, I can’t hear anything that I need to hear in relation to safety. The HA will just squeal the feedback nonstop. It’s worse than just wearing the earplug with CI and no HA. So even if the headphone stream sound directly to my ear, I don’t think it’s much different than wearing a earplug in my left ear since that ear is housed by my CI and HA on my right even if my HA is set up correctly to fit OSHA’s sound reduction.
When I asked audiologists about the 27% NRR for the HA, they told me they cannot provide it because OSHA did not tell them how. So with the app on the phone that you mentioned, how can we tell if OSHA will approve that?
Regarding the Starkley’s ear mold, I think someone mentioned that to me on a facebook group but I didn’t get the link to the page. I was wondering if the such earplug type of earmold that can be OSHA approved to use? Like the sound tube that go into the earplug, so the HA is delivering the limited sound just toward the ear.
Meanwhile my HA is old school, it doesn’t have bluetooth. I’m in the process of getting a new Phonax HA too.
But I still have the question just looming around. Why does OSHA not provide info of how HA can have noise reduction approval? Is there something limited in phone app that compare the volume differences? Why does turning down the volume of my HA isn’t acceptable to OSHA?