Monitoring Audiometry: Protection for Whom?

Abstract

Tonal threshold audiometry has long been advocated to monitor the hearing of people exposed to potentially injurious noise. The rationale follows from a general model of biological monitoring of hazardous environments. Also, people vary in their reaction to injurious noise, so direct observation of performance is seen as necessary in conservation of hearing in industry. Unfortunately the practical realization of the exercise has been shown to have little chance of success. Uncontrollable variability in serial estimates of thresholds in individuals means that no intelligible picture can be made of any person's audiometric "career", even when the most rigorous procedures are used. Only in retrospect can a clear view of a noise hazard be gained from auditory threshold estimation.