In Brief:
Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is costly in both human and economic terms. One means of reducing NIHL is to apply engineering controls to hazardous noise sources. To tradeoff the cost of engineering controls against the total direct monetary costs incurred by NIHL, a means of predicting the amount of NIHL that will be incurred over the life cycle of a hazardous noise source is necessary. A widely known algorithm for the prediction of NIHL is published in ANSI S3.44–1996. However, the algorithm inputs, noise exposure level and duration, may be difficult to determine in some cases. This article describes the conceptual basis of an approach for using ANSI S3.44–1996 to predict hearing thresholds in a population even when noise exposure levels and durations are not precisely known, and to demonstrate the initial application of this approach to a single military population. This approach uses retrospective hearing threshold data of a population to estimate the equivalent noise exposure level for use in the ANSI S3.44–1996 algorithm.
