Fort Worth, TX — ExxonMobil and the Auditory Studies Investigation Group are the newest winners of NIOSH’s Safe-in-Sound awards.
The awards are presented to organizations and professionals who implement effective practices or innovations to help prevent noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus among workers exposed to high noise levels on the job.
ExxonMobil received the Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Award for maintaining what NHCA calls a “comprehensive” and “multifaceted” hearing conservation program. The company has a presence in 56 countries and “operates in environments where noise control is critical,” a press release states.
Through measures such as targeted risk management, systematic noise-level reduction and fit testing while supporting the NIOSH “Buy Quiet” initiative, ExxonMobil offers a “scalable model for smaller organizations seeking to enhance their own noise-risk management programs.”
ASIG was the recipient of the Innovation in Hearing Loss Prevention Award. Part of the National Military Audiology and Speech Pathology Center at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the group completed what NHCA lauded as “operationally relevant research that directly links hearing health to military readiness.”
That research first helped ASIG develop boothless audiometry that’s helped facilitate tens of thousands of annual hearing tests within military hearing conservation programs. The group later applied its findings to fit testing, discovering that those who had minimal or no measured attenuation, or sound reduction, “have substantially higher rates of significant threshold shift,” per the release.
The recipients were recognized Feb. 6 during the National Hearing Conservation Association annual conference. NIOSH partners with the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation and NHCA to present the awards.
