Abstract This paper explains the multiple problems of preventing hearing loss in the army: (1) while the command structure demands the use of hearing protective equipment, the exigencies of military maneuvers might make it difficult for soldiers to comply readily and still carry out their major missions; (2) the loss of army audiologists; and (3) military equipment is even noisier, so that the need for protection is greater than ever before. The author states that, in order to determine what strategies the U.S. Army can take to improve HPD use and concomitantly decrease hearing loss, current instructions and sanctions regarding that issue need to be determined. The paper relates that the research methodology will examine, in one command only, the protocols for issuing HPDs and for ensuring their use, the sanctions imposed for noncompliance, and their auditory history as compared to the Army in general.
Table of Contents
Introduction and Statement of the Problem
Cost of Hearing Loss
Literature Review and Research Questions
Behavioral Issues
Technical Investigations
Methodology
Appendix A: New Generation Earcups and ANR
Appendix B: Tables of Hearing-Related Issues, U.S. Armed Forces
From the Paper "If it were not true that the armed forces experiences many departures from perfect adherence to use of protective equipment, then the vast numbers of military audiologists deployed to increase the armed forces? capability for monitoring audiometry would not have been needed. For a long time, "the Army had more than three times as many military audiologists than the Navy and twice as many as the Air Force. In addition, the Army has had a mainframe database of audiometric records for the last 16 years".?. However, Ohlin noted that there had been a loss of more than 50 Army military audiologists in the decade before he wrote his report, effectively removing ?the message bearer for hearing conservation and the functional linchpin that in large programs is required to coordinate the implementation of all hearing conservation program elements.? "
