Text For Citation: 02 Item/Group: 003 Hazard:

29 CFR 1910.95(d)(1)(i): The employer's sampling strategy is not designed to identify employees for inclusion in the hearing conservation program and to enable the proper selection of hearing protectors: a.) 75D Assembly Department - One instance of the employer's continuing failure to comply with this standard involves an employee, assembling fire dampers, who was exposed to noise at 82.3% of the permissible daily noise exposure limit during measurements performed for 470 minutes on December 15, 2014. A zero exposure was assumed for the 10 minutes not sampled. For the 480 minute work shift employees would be exposed to the equivalent of an average sound level of 88.6 dBA, which is 1.04 times the Action Level of 85 dBA. The sampling strategy for conducting representative monitoring was not designed to identify employees in the hearing conservation program or to enable the proper selection of hearing protectors because the employee conducting the monitoring did not know how to conduct monitoring or how to operate or calibrate the equipment, was not sufficiently trained to recognize that the results were obviously inaccurate, and the employer was not informed of the monitoring results in any event. The employer's ongoing obligation is to ensure that monitoring conducted is representative of actual employee noise exposure in the work place. b.) 75D Assembly Department - One instance of the employer's continuing failure to comply with this standard involves an employee, manufacturing and assembling frames, who was exposed to noise at 67.3% of the permissible daily noise exposure limit during measurements performed for 555 minutes on December 15, 2014. For the 9.25 hour extended work shift, employees would be exposed to the equivalent of an average sound level of 86.1 dBA, which is 1.02 times the reduced Action Level of 84.1 dBA. The sampling strategy for conducting representative monitoring was not designed to identify employees in the hearing conservation program or to enable the proper selection of hearing protectors because the employee conducting the monitoring did not know how to conduct monitoring or how to operate or calibrate the equipment, was not sufficiently trained to recognize that the results were obviously inaccurate, and the employer was not informed of the monitoring results in any event. The employer's ongoing obligation is to ensure that monitoring conducted is representative of actual employee noise exposure in the work place. c.) 75A Assembly Department - One instance of the employer's continuing failure to comply with this standard involves an employee, manufacturing vanes/blades, who was exposed to noise at 82.6% of the permissible daily noise exposure limit during measurements performed for 606 minutes on December 15, 2014. For the 10.1 hour extended work shift, employees would be exposed to the equivalent of an average sound level of 87.0 dBA, which is 1.04 times the reduced Action Level of 83.3 dBA. The sampling strategy for conducting representative monitoring was not designed to identify employees in the hearing conservation program or to enable the proper selection of hearing protectors because the employee conducting the monitoring did not know how to conduct monitoring or how to operate or calibrate the equipment, was not sufficiently trained to recognize that the results were obviously inaccurate, and the employer was not informed of the monitoring results in any event. The employer's ongoing obligation is to ensure that monitoring conducted is representative of actual employee noise exposure in the work place.