If WCB provides hearing aids, it’s not the Canadian OSHA equivalent. OSHA mandates that employers provide a safe work environment (and how); it doesn’t supply safety or medical equipment.
I assume WCB stands for Workers’ Compensation Board, which would have no US federal equivalent. We do have state run workers’ compensation insurance programs on the state level.
Yes that’s true. I will see what the audiologist says in January. But the ringing in my ears definitely started at the data center, and it is much worse in the ear that has the hearing loss.
Canada’s equivalent to OSHA is OHS (Occupational Health & Safety) - with the caveat that OSHA is federal in the US, and OHS programs are provincial in Canada. WCB does indeed stand for Workers’ Compensation Board.
If there is a known problem at this company with noise levels that are too high, I think you have a great case for having your employer or the local equivalent of WCB pay all your medical bills, ratatoskK. The company obviously knows there is a problem and didn’t do enough to protect you as a worker. Even if you are not a regular worker, they are still required to protect you.
I agree – but on the other hand, I have great health insurance, I am a regular employee, and I would be out on my ass for a problem that is not severe and either has no cure or may go away by itself. If I had lost the use of my arm or gotten cancer it would be a different story completely.
Your brain isn’t hearing the sounds because no sound is reaching your ear. See interference. In theory, it’s possible to perfectly cancel an incoming sound wave by superimposing an inverse sound wave, resulting in zero sound pressure level at the eardrum. In practice, this is extremely difficult to do perfectly; there are limits to how accurately the headphone speakers can replicate the incoming noise, due to distortion from the on-board signal processing circuitry and physical characteristics of the headphone speakers. And then of course there’s the matter of the noise source and the canceling-signal source being in different locations, so there will be some physical regions where the noise is amplified and other regions where it’s cancelled (see animated gif here). The result is that some audio frequencies don’t get cancelled as well as others, and so may continue to exceed safe levels even with the headphones turned on.
Strictly speaking, retaliatory discharge laws protect you from being “out on your ass” for filing a claim stemming from an industrial injury. Speaking less strictly, it’s unlikely to endear you to your employer.
Yeah, I think a lot of us grew up feeling invulnerable and not knowing/caring what was happening to our hearing*. But the one bit of good news is that I’m learning to accept the ringing in my ears. It’s just like living near the ocean… without worrying about hurricanes!
*for me it was deafening factory work with nary an earplug in sight, and this one concert (a young Springsteen) where we were standing a foot from the speakers… and feeling the wind from them. :eek:
I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve sent my husband, the safety officer, the link to this thread so he can perhaps give the perspective of a safety professional. 
Hello, safety professional here.
OSHA’s eight-hour Occupational Exposure Limit (OEL) for sound is 90 dBA (the standard in Canada is 85 dBA). Since most of us don’t carry sound meters around with us, our rule of thumb is if you have to raise your voice to be heard over the sound in your area, you’re over the OEL and need to put some hearing protection on. If you have a look at the chart, keep in mind that the 4-hour OEL is 95 dBA and that the decibel scale is non-linear; a 3 dBA increase doubles the sound while a 10 dBA increase is 10 times as loud.
If you’re over the OEL, there is a very real possibility of hearing damage, so for those of you under the impression that you’ve been working in a noisy environment without it harming your hearing, you’re probably wrong, but just haven’t noticed the degradation. Yet.
ratatoskK, if your company was aware that the data center is loud, but haven’t done baseline testing for all regular workers in that environment, haven’t already posted signs, and haven’t readily provided ear plugs for anyone going into the environment, they have violated OSHA rules and are facing some significant fines for not providing you with a) a safe work environment or b) sufficient education, training, and protection against the uncontrolled hazard. If they’re smart (some companies are, some aren’t), they’ll jump to it and do their damnedest to make this right for you and anyone else who has to work in the data center, whether they have to go in temporarily, like you, or have to be in there regularly. Otherwise, they could be facing a world of shit*.
Best of luck. I hope you get to a satisfactory conclusion on all of this.
To you, and the others who responded to my post, Thanks for fighting my ignorance on the subject. Learning is fun
I had a chance to visit a data center few years back but we were given ear muff as the sound was too loud there. When you have to be in a loud environment the use of hearing protection, such as simple foam earplugs will give you the best chance to preserve your hearing. Especially when you are around the noise for long periods of time. Noise induced hearing loss is usually permanent, so prevention is very important.
I recently created some sine wave tones (that is, pure tones in increments) to test my own hearing. I don’t have a calibrated volume control that would tell me the level at which a particular tone cannot be heard, but I can, at least, play each tone at the “regular” and “comfortable” volume setting on my computer, and, wearing headphones or using the speakers, find out if I can hear it.
And boy, am I down in the dumps, because at 11KHz, basically, its shot–nada. So here I am mixing sound for my documentary series and I am judging the sound with ears that cannot pick up any higher frequencies. I guess I’d better get someone’s kid to listen to this before I export the file to make dvds…fifty seven years old and I don’t work in a data centre. But when I was a boy I had several bouts of hearing loss due to wax build-up, which meant, in those days anyway, an operation called a myrningotomy
Anyway, I wanted to give anyone who wants to test their hearing these tones. Quite safe to use, start at your normal volume level, then decrease the volume until the sound “disappears.” Note it; go to the next tone, repeat. Boring but interesting. Since I cannot attach a file here, if you want this set of tones, http://publicartprivateviews.com/hearing-test/