Seeking E-News Editor

Posted: January 12, 2022

Do you enjoy keeping an ear out for professional news and being “in the know” with your Association? You could be the next E-News Editor! We’re looking for a volunteer to coordinate with the publication and website committees to curate our monthly electronic compilation of NHCA news, events, and developments in hearing loss prevention/sound appreciation. To learn more, please contact Elizabeth Masterson, Director of Communications, at [email protected]. 

Hearing Research - Current Insights

Posted: January 12, 2022

• Researchers at The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace, a NIOSH Center of Excellence for Total Worker Health^®, recently designed a hearing conservation intervention, HearWell, based on their new Healthy Workplace Participatory Program. HearWell uses worker participation in the form of design teams as part of a Total Worker Health approach to workplace safety and health. The goals of this intervention were to increase hearing protection device use and improve the so-called “hearing climate,” which includes supervisor and coworker support for using the devices. Results of a pilot program with transportation highway workers indicate that HearWell shows promising results for improving hearing protection use in the workplace. 

Cavallari JM, Suleiman AO, Garza JL, Namazi S, Dugan AG, Henning RA, Punnett L. (2021). Evaluation of the HearWell Pilot Program: A Participatory Total Worker Health® Approach to Hearing Conservation. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Sep 10;18(18):9529. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18189529.

• Researchers at four universities collaborated to review the relationship between noise exposure, selected health conditions, and well-being among nurses. They analyzed data obtained from surveys of over 3800 nurses regarding noise exposure, health conditions, stress, professional quality of life, and workplace support. They found that nurses who reported high noise exposure in the workplace also reported more health conditions, higher stress and burnout scores, and lower supportive environments. High noise exposure was significantly associated with lower professional quality of life.

• Speech-in-noise tests and suprathreshold auditory evoked potentials are considered potentially promising biomarkers for diagnosing cochlear synaptopathy in humans. Ghent University studied a small group of young adults to determine if these biomarkers changed after a discrete recreational noise exposure event, a 5-day music festival. They found individual variability in pre-festival test results, but did not observe significant changes related to noise exposure from the recreational event. Additional study is recommended.

• In an NIH-funded animal study (chinchillas), researchers attempted to determine effective preloading timepoints for D-methionine (D-met) for protection against steady state and impulse noise. Data were collected on ABR thresholds and cochlear and serum antioxidant measures. Results indicated that the optimal D-met preloading start time window is earlier for steady state (3.5–2.5 days) than impulse noise (3–2 days). For steady state and impulse noise exposure, significant threshold shift protection occurred at all test frequencies for these start times.

Campbell K, Cosenza N, Meech R, Buhnerkempe M, Qin J, Rybak L, et al. (2021) Preloaded D-methionine protects from steady state and impulse noise-induced hearing loss and induces long-term cochlear and endogenous antioxidant effects. PLoS ONE 16(12). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261049

Sound Postcard

Posted: January 12, 2022

Ever heard of the Music Modernization Act? Passed in 2018, this law changed copyright protection for recorded sound. As of January 1, audio recordings made prior to 1923 entered the public domain, similar to existing copyright expiration timeframes for film, literature, and photographs. This means that hundreds of thousands of early sound recordings have recently become available to interested historians, sound archivists and musicians. Check out events such as A Celebration of Sound – Public Domain Day on January 20, 2022 or the World According To Sound. Happy listening! 

Graphic Source: creativecommons.org

Don’t Miss NHCA/CAOHC Webinar - TOMORROW!

Posted: December 8, 2021

Register now for our upcoming live webinar: Hearing Protection Devices 101-Fit Testing. This webinar will introduce the concept of Hearing Protection Device (HPD) Fit-Testing, its application to current hearing conservation programs, and the various commercially available HPD Fit-Test methodologies. The speaker will also discuss lessons learned regarding HPD fit testing from the Regional Hearing Conservation Program of Record at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL). NHCA members pay a reduced rate.

• When: December 9, 2021 at 2:15 pm EST
• Presenter: Stephanie J. Karch, AuD, PhD, CCC-A
• To register: click here