Standards for hearing protection at work
I was looking through all my other noise assessment related blog posts and thought ‘you know what, these are all very exciting for people but I reckon I can take it up another notch and push things to the very limit’, so here it is, an article on what the standards are for hearing protection at work. Brace yourself, it’s a rock n’ roll ride.
To misquote a famous line from the bad tempered human-eating big fish film, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Brexit rears its head again.
The pre-Brexit standard was EN 352 and its various sub-divisions, and all hearing protection had to be certified to EN 352 in order to be used at work, and when things comply with EN 352 they get that all-important CE mark.
Post-Brexit we developed the UKCA standard - UK Conformity Assessed but the EN standard and CE mark still exists - why make things simple when it can be mixed up nicely?
The UK Government has extended the recognition of the EU markings like CE indefinitely for hearing protection. It was due to expire in 2024 and only UKCA marking would be accepted but this was modified to the indefinite recognition. This means PPE, including hearing protection, can be marked with UKCA or CE. Sometimes both, sometimes one or the other depending on what the manufacturer prefers.
UKCA
Having this mark means the hearing protection meets the UK standards needed and all hearing protection you buy should have this on the product or packaging. But what are those ‘standards’ it is complying with I hear you ask?
Basically, the UK said ‘we’ll have our own certification mark as we like that kind of thing, but we’ll use the existing European standard for all the tiresome detail’. So the actual detail of how hearing protection is certified falls under EN 352, as it always did. If something meets the EN requirements and is CE marked, it also meets the UKCA one and the manufacturer can slap both the CE and UKCA marks on it.
This makes sense really. No hearing protection manufacturer is just going to make a product for the UK and having to then certify it here as well as in the EU is nuts, so the UK just said if they use the EN standards that’s fine.
EN 352 or to use the proper name, EN 352:2002
This one deals with all the detail of how hearing protection is tested and sets out what hearing protection performance is assessed against. There are three main sub-divisions within it:
EN 351-1: Covers ear muffs
EN 352-2: Covers ear plugs
EN 352-3: Covers ear muffs attached to a helmet
There are a few others as well which cover things like active ear muffs (ones where the noise protection kicks in when external noise reaches a certain level), or ones with bluetooth audio playback, etc. There are all numbers EN 352 and then 4 to 8.
There are loads of requirements within each one of those. So for ear muffs it includes things like construction materials, pressure on the head, can you set fire to them (burning ear muffs are generally considered something to avoid). For ear plugs it is much the same and for reusable plugs whether cleaning them reduces their effectiveness. Again interestingly, it specifically tests whether ear plugs can be ignited - I guess if burning ear muffs is bad then burning ear plugs is even worse.
The most important outcome of these tests though is the minimum noise reduction (attenuation) offered by the hearing protection. That’s the crucial one as we need to know how many decibels a protector reduces noise by. That includes SNR, HML and octave band data.
It is worth mentioning that the current revision of L108 references the EN standard throughout when talking about hearing protection.
What information you need on hearing protection
When choosing hearing protection you need to make sure it has:
UKCA and/or CE marking.
An SNR figure
That does mean normal noise cancelling headphones are NOT hearing protection as they are not tested and certified to EN 352. So no AirPods, Bose QuietComfort, Sony XMwatever-the-latest-number-is, and so on, none of those are certified as hearing protection.
References / Links
How to choose the right hearing protection
