Your Work and Your Health

Noise - an overview

• It has been estimated that over half a million people in the UK are suffering from hearing difficulties as a result of exposure to noise at work (Medical Research Council Survey 1997-98);
  
  
• Unless properly controlled, noise exposure causes long-term disability through deafness and tinnitus, which severely affects the everyday life of the sufferer;
  
  
• There is a huge cost to UK industry. Around 80% of claims for occupational disease against employer's liability insurance are related to deafness;
  
• Occupational deafness is a prescribed industrial disease for which disablement benefit is payable (details are available from the Post Office);
  
  
• The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 place duties on employers and workers to control the risks to health from exposure to noise at work.

This site is supported by the Healthy Work Matters Group