The authors thank the North Carolina Department of Labor for permission to re-use materials developed during the writing of an NCDOL industry guide on hearing conservation.
The primary objective of occupational hearing conservation programmes (HCPs) is to prevent on-the-job noise-induced hearing loss due to hazardous workplace noise exposures (Royster and Royster 1989 and 1990). However, the person—who shall later be characterized as the “key individual”—who is responsible for making the HCP effective should use common sense to modify these practices to fit the local situation in order to achieve the desired goal: protection of workers from harmful occupational noise exposures. A secondary objective of these programmes should be to so educate and motivate individuals that they also elect to protect themselves from harmful non-occupational noise exposures and translate their knowledge about hearing conservation to their families and friends.