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ing the differing loss potentials that such disability may
have for persons whose hearing is important to their vocations.

Mr. Chairman, my colleagues and I will be pleased to answer

any questions you or Members of the Subcommittee may have.

References

Cohen, A. U.S. Public Service Field Work on the Industrial

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Cohen, A. and Baumann, K. Temporary Hearing Loss Following

Exposure to Pronounced Pure Tone Components in a

Broad-band Noise. Journ. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 1964

36:1371-1380.

3. Cohen, A., Bikylin and P. J. LaBenz. Temporary Threshold Changes

in Hearing from Exposures to Combinations of Inpact and
Steady-State Noise. Jour. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 1966 40:
1371-1380.

4.

La Benz, P.J., A. Cohen and B. Pearson. A Noise and Hearing

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7.

Dunn, D. and T. L. Henderson, Survey of Hearing Loss in the Coal Mining Industry. NIOSH publication No. 76-172, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, Ohio 45226, 1973.

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8. Schmidek, M. E., M. A. Layne, B. L. Lempert, and R. M. Fleming. Survey of Hearing Conservation Programs in Industry. NIOSH Publication NO. 75-178, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, Ohio 1975.

9. Schmidek, M. and P. Carpenter.

INtermittent Noise Exposure and

Associated Damage Risk to Hearing of Chain Saw Operators.

Amer. Indust. Hyg. Assoc. Journ. 34: 152-158, 1974.

10. Anon.

Criteria for a Recommended Standard

...

Occupational

Exposure to Noise. NIOSH Publication HSM 73-11001.
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,
U.S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 20402

1972.

11. Fletcher, H. Speech and Hearing. D. Van Nostrand Co., N.Y.

12. Fletcher, H. Principles for Evaluating Hearing Loss. American Med. Assoc. 157: 1408, 1955.

Jour.

13. Fletcher, H. Guides for the Evaluation of Hearing Impairment.

Trans. Acad. Opthal. Otololaryngol. 1961

14. Anon.

Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment. Committee on Rating of Mental and Physical Impairment. American Medical Association, Chicago, Illinois, 60010,

1971.

15. Anon.

Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment-Ear,
Nose, Throat and Related Structures.

Jour. Amer. Med.

Assoc. 177: 489-501, 1961.

16. Kryter, K. D., C. Williams, and D. M. Green.

Auditory Acuity

and Perception of Speech. Jour. Acoust. Soc. Amer.

34: 1217-1223, 1962.

17. Harris, J. D. Pure tone Hearing Acuity and the Intelligibility

of Everyday Speech. Jour. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 37: 824-830,

1965.

18. Carhart, R. Speech reception in relation to pattern of pure tone

loss. J. Speech Dis, 11, 97-108, 1946.

19. Quiggle, R. R., Glorig, A., Delk, J. H. and Summerfield, A. B.

Predicting hearing loss for speech from pure tone audio

grams.

Laryngoscope, 67, 1-15, 1957.

20. Kusniarz, J. J. Hearing loss and speech intelligibility in noise.

In Proceedings of the International Congress on Noise as

a Public Health ProblemU. S. EPA Report 550/9-73-008,

1973.

21. Dickman, D. M. The effects of three noise backgrounds on the
sentence intelligibility scores of hearing-impaired

listeners. Doctoral Dissertation, Univ. of Maryland, 1974.

22. Kryter, K. D. Imapirment to hearing from exposure to noise.
J. Acoust. Soc. Amer.53, 1211-1234, 1973.

23. Fox, M. S. Workmen's Compensation: Hearing Loss Statutes in
the United States and Canada. National Safety News

112:49-54 (October) 1976.

24. Cohen, A.,

J. Anticaglia, and H. H. Jones.

Sociocusis-Hearing

Loss from Non-Occupational Noise Exposure. Sound and

Vibration 4: 12-20, 1970.

Mr. GAYDOS. Mr. Baier, we have passed recent legislation which is directed at NIOSH. It sets up certain regulations, certain requirements, that certain studies be made and also that their jurisdiction be expanded in the new Mine Safety Act. This is off the particular subject matter, but I want to ask you a question related thereto.

When we had our hearings there were many questions raised in that area as to whether NIOSH was the instrumentality to do the study, whether it could be done by somebody else. Could you give a general opinion as to the capabilities of NIOSH, how it has progressed up to now and what expectations you have in the future as an institution?

Mr. BAIER. This is a favorite subject.

Although NIOSH was actually created as an Institute by the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the program goes back to

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World War I. Over the course of the years a group of research scientists have, I think, contributed quite a bit to protecting people on the job. Some of the early studies in coal mines, certainly studies during World War I and World War II, were in terms of keeping people healthy and on the job. It has been a continuing evolutionary process. One of our major concerns is trying to identify the populations that are at risk to various physical and chemical agents at the workplace, and then trying to determine the severity

of the effects.

One of our mandates under the Occupational Safety and Health Act is to develop a list of all known toxic substances, which we have done. We continually update this and present annual reports as is required by the act.

In the course of that it is a very simple matter to say that something is toxic, but then can we find at what level things are toxic? It becomes a complex issue. When we find that something is toxic we have to develop certain kinds of methods so that these exposures can be evaluated in the workplace. For a given toxic, substance, the chemist must know how to analyze it and, very important, physicians need to diagnose overexposure to these various chemical contaminants or physical agents. Also the people who work there need to be informed as to the nature of the hazards so that they can recognize and avoid the hazards and, finally, and probably most important, the company must know how to control the exposure.

This can be done in a number of ways. Either by substituting less toxic materials for those materials that people are exposed to, by ventilation, by process control, and related issues.

Over the course of the years the program has been in existence we are now up to about 900 or so authorized positions.

We are the primary Federal agency in job safety and health research at the present time.

Mr. GAYDOS. With that general background, let me place this question before you.

A man has been employed in a certain workplace. He has suffered a hearing impairment of, say, 35 percent, and it could be from a combination of many things. His habit at home is to keep motocycles in tune and he has exposed himself while he is at home to substantial noise levels. Now, he progressively gets worse and he passes the so-called threshold. I don't know what it is, say 35 to 40 percent. Now he becomes compensable. How do we handle this? Is this fair? We have had testimony before us that hearing loss claims. are increasing by leaps and bounds. Everybody finds it a very convenient area to get in and make a claim. Nobody can prove differently. It is something like a lower-back injury. Will we be able to address ourselves to the problem through your investigation? How foolproof is the test for hearing loss that is used by OWCP now? Can claimants fake them out?

Mr. BAIER. AS I pointed out earlier, our concern is to control the environment so that these things don't happen.

Mr. GAYDOS. Yes, but you don't set standards that are impractical for enforcement. You have to have something to correlate with the standards to determine whether a standard is violated or not,

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