More than MPSIMS, less than Pit, but I wanted to warn people about hearing loss while working in a data center! This is not my regular work environment but I had to work in one for one full week, followed by the latter half of the following week. The second trip was not planned but after the previous week, I felt I needed hearing protection, so I purchased some noise cancelling headphones at the gadget store in the airport. They were $200 and adjusted to the incoming noise. They sold more expensive ones for $350 but that was way more than I wanted to spend.
After the second trip I’ve had ringing in my ear that won’t go away. I finally saw the doctor this morning and I have hearing loss in that ear, and have to see the audiologist in January. I don’t know what they can do about it and I hope it gets better on its own.
The doctor this morning told me that noise cancelling headphones do not block out all frequencies, and that to protect hearing I should use big ear muffs like construction workers use, or equivalent earplugs if they exist.
My semi-rants and warnings are as follows.
[ol]
[li]There is no sign in the data center warning about wearing ear protection. (Some people use it and some don’t.)[/li][li]There is no sign in the data center about the decibel level or about OSHA.[/li][li]The person working in the airport gadget center was very helpful but did not explain that the headphones are not adequate for real ear protection, although he knew what I was using them for.[/li][li]The instructions for the headphones do not warn that they are not adequate for real protection.[/li][/ol]
I admit I’m one of those people who thinks that putting a warning on nut bread saying “Warning: Contains nuts” is ridiculous – But I think this is different. While the data center is loud, I would not have thought anyone could actually lose their hearing working there, and that if it were possible, there would have been some warnings posted. Also I think there should be warnings on the headphones.
Call me stupid if you want, and maybe I am, but I’m also a little peeved about it.
If there are lots of server racks (which is what I think of when I hear ‘data center’), it can be incredibly loud. Each server can have multiple fans, plus the general environmental systems including more fans and/or water pumps, electric motors, etc. Plus, as servers have tended toward being slimmer, the fan diameters have decreased, in turn causing their rotational speed to increase to maintain the needed airflow.
Those high speed fans can have a terrible shriek that is not only very loud, but also high frequency. I can easily imagine working next to a rack full of those causing hearing damage.
Yes it’s one enormous floor space filled with racks of servers and other equipment. Plus the air conditioning. tdn, you’d be surprised how noisy these things are. But it’s white noise, so when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t realize just how noisy it is.
For example, last year when I was in a smaller data center briefly – When they power on just one of those servers, all of us visiting were shocked at the loud noise it made. This data center is filled with hundreds of these things.
Yep. A big data center can be like working inside a running jet engine. The cooling equipment alone is often a 250 ton air conditioner sitting right next to the racks.
You’re next stop is Worker’s Compensation or OSHA or whatever it is in the US, ratatoskK. If such a short exposure can cause permanent hearing damage, they should indeed be using employer supplied protective equipment.
ETA: You’re not stupid. That should never have happened.
I’m not too surprised that the gadget salesman didn’t offer a warning. Afterall, they’re a gadget salesman, not a safety officer; they rarely know anything more than what’s written in the instruction manual. Best Buy never warned me not to turn my new stereo up too loud either, and I don’t fault them for it.
But in my non-lawyerly opinion, it’s reasonably foreseeable that the owner of noise-cancelling headphones might think they were suitable for hearing protection, so yes, it’s quite surprising the manufacturer didn’t include any warning about that, and you might have grounds for a formal complaint against them.
As for the data center, if the noise is that loud, then yes, they should have signs up and provide hearing protection free of charge. Hearing loss sucks, and it’s not going to get better; when you become a senior citizen your life will be just that much more difficult. Talk to OSHA and find out what your options are.
Yes, I spent years in old mainframe computer rooms. The combination of noise and air-conditioning would give me a headache. But I don’t see any reason to assume actual physical deterioration of the ears.
That’s the thing, some people seem ok about it. But I was only there a week and a half, and have hearing loss (which I hope is temporary, but it occurred 2 weeks ago).
As Enigma42 mentioned, servers have shrunk significantly even over the last five years. I haven’t seen anyone buy anything bigger than 1U in a long time, they’ve pretty well replaced 4U units. The result is smaller, therefore faster, therefore louder fans, and four times as many of them. I wouldn’t spend more than an hour inside even my company’s little server room without hearing protection.
Mainframe rooms aren’t really comparable to modern data centers. Hardware has shrunk considerably, and you’re often talking about miles of 42U racks each of which may have 168 tiny high-pitched cooling fans in them. The AC requirements are significantly higher than for traditional mainframe installations as well.
I’m not saying it’s going to cause hearing loss, and some data centers are a lot louder/bigger than others, but I can see how exposure could be damaging under some circumstances.
It’s a known issue and a common concern in the industry. There’s a lot of denial that computer nerds may need some of the same safety gear as industrial workers.
Personally, I’m glad I’m a software-only guy these days.
But there is still the question of whether this will cause permanent hearing loss. The issue could just be one of desensitizing. I think OSHA is probably the place to find the answer. Perhaps temporary hearing loss is just as an important an issue anyway.
Also, the servers may have shrunk, but a shop with multiple mainframes, tape drives, disk drives, printers, card readers and card punchers could produce an awful din on top of the air conditioning units. I do recall some people using earplugs, and there was much shouting on top of it since it required more coordinated activity between people with all the tape, paper, and card changes going on. Definitely a headache causing environment even if there was no permanent hearing loss.
Report the hearing loss to your boss/hr department NOW. They need to open a work comp claim because your condition will not be covered by personal health insurance.
My understanding is that every time you experience noise loud enough to make your ears ring, you have done permanent damage. The company you were working at needs to monitor the noise levels with a sound level meter and provide personal protective equipment (PPE) accordingly. And pay their extra worker’s compensation premiums for the damage they allowed to happen to your ears.
I mentioned it to my manager and she requested that they do a noise check at the data center. Our company also has info on the web indicating that people who work with certain equipment (which we are) have to enroll in a program where the company monitors our hearing and provides ear protection. Of course none of us knew this until today.
I think if our jobs involved working in a factory this would have been known before we encountered a problem, but we normally work in an office and most of us rarely need to spend time in the data center. Plus we are a new group in the company so we don’t have a lot of history to work from.
As I understand it, there are time limits for different decibel levels. A person who works in the data center all day may be required to wear hearing protection, but for a visitor, who will be there for only a ten minute tour, it is probably not a requirement.
Our data center has OSHA signs on the door saying that decibel levels are above a certain level and that everyone who enters must wear hearing protection. They provide earmuffs and boxes of those squishy earplugs.
Definitely report this to your HR. They need to do a safety evaluation of their data center.
