Howard Leight has introduced QuietDose, a personal dosimeter that measures and records a worker’s actual in-ear exposure to noise over an entire work shift. This product is designed with a focus on stopping the progression of occupational hearing loss and ensuring employer compliance with hearing safety regulations.
Other noise measurement devices only sample ambient sound, which forces employers to estimate workplace noise levels and base hearing protection on potentially faulty conclusions. This can result in wasted money, risk of regulatory violations, and endangered employee hearing.
The QuietDose personal dosimeter measures the actual noise levels reaching a worker’s eardrums, in real time, over an entire work day. QuietDose provides safety managers with personalized data to create a customized, and more effective, hearing conservation program for each worker. Supervisors can also use the personalized data to improve productivity by better managing worker deployment in areas of extreme noise.
The QuietDose system consists of a small Exposure Smart Protector that’s worn by employees in a shirt pocket or on the back of a hardhat; protective eartips or an earmuff with integrated microphones that record real time, in-ear noise levels; and a connecting harness. An infrared reader enables safety managers to retrieve data from the ESP Dosimeter at the end of each shift or work week and analyze the results on a computer.
QuietDose enables safety managers and employees to:
- Track, document, and address the potential of occupational hearing loss and Standard Threshold Shift (STS) in real time
- Select appropriate hearing protectors for each employee’s noise environment
- Train and monitor employees as to the correct use of earplugs or earmuffs
- Streamline worker deployment by more accurately matching shift hours with proper protection
- Identify potential opportunities to eliminate dual protection (the use of earplugs and earmuffs)
- Compare the benefit of monitoring employee noise dose versus making capital investments in engineering controls to reduce specific noise levels
