Abstract
Excessive noise exposure within the working population is a health concern that has received increased attention in recent years. Levels have been established by national organizations that reflect safe exposure, but many kinds of equipment used in the landscaping and groundskeeper industries still exceed them. While noise risks are often long-term in nature and occur with cumulative exposure, prevention and exposure methods can still be used by employers to protect their workers’ long-term health. Recalling the hierarchy of controls established by the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), various strategies can be implemented without creating excessive supervisory burden and with minimal costs. Occupational health nurses can further help reduce excessive noise exposure by encouraging the use of an easy-to-use noise-level assessment app created by NIOSH.
Keywords
Noise exposure has recently come under increasing scrutiny as a health concern. Excessive noise exposure has steadily been found to contribute to many ill effects on the body due to the increased activity of pathways that activate stress hormones and the inflammatory process (Daiber et al., 2019). These include a wide range of conditions ranging from hypertension, diabetes, and cardiac arrhythmia to behavioral conditions like depression and anxiety (Daiber et al., 2022). Safe hearing levels have been established by organizations like the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) which set a normal exposure range of 60 to 70 decibels (dBA) in normal life (NIDCD, 2022). The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (NIOSH, 2024c) recommends that the exposure limit in a work setting should not exceed 85 dBA averaged over an 8-hour workday.
Nearly a million people work in the landscaping and groundskeeping industry each year with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimating 929,930 people working in this field in 2023 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). Workers in this industry are exposed to many types of risks, but hearing loss may be one that is easily overlooked because its consequences are often long-term in nature. By working daily for potentially 8 hours or longer with loud equipment, landscapers and groundskeepers can suffer gradual, but permanent hearing damage. A study done by Balanay et al. (2016) assessed working conditions of landscapers at East Carolina University and measured the highest and lowest noise exposure using common groundskeeping equipment. Results showed many tools exceeded safe threshold levels: wood chippers and leaf blowers (>100 dBA), hedge trimmers (98.2 dBA), and weed whips (97.9 dBA). Noise levels from eight different types of lawnmowers were assessed with an overall average of 94.7 dBA.
Preventing and controlling exposures to occupational hazards are the fundamental methods to protect workers from work-related hazards such as excessive noise. NIOSH recommends a hierarchy of controls (NIOSH, 2024a) as a means of determining ways to implement systems or controls (from most effective to least effective) to protect workers from injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. This starts with hazard elimination/substitution as the primary prevention strategy followed by engineering controls, administrative and work practice controls, and use of personal protective equipment.
DiFrancesco et al. (2018) applied the hierarchy of controls to the hazards of excessive noise exposure in landscape work to create strategies to reduce noise exposure. Such strategies can be used at each level starting with physical removal of the equipment itself (elimination of the noise). Recognizing that using noisy equipment will be hard to totally avoid, successive levels in the hierarchy of controls can be followed from replacement of the hazard, to methods of controlling noise, to creating exposure time limits, and finally to the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).
A few concrete examples of methods followed in the aforementioned hierarchy of controls include a NIOSH-based program developed by Poynter et al. (2014) that promotes workplace assessment of noisy machines. Where feasible, quieter and potentially more efficient tools can replace these machines (Poynter et al., 2014). Planning breaks or rotating work done with noisy equipment during a workday is a possible administrative strategy that can reduce exposure time. The use of PPE can also reduce noise exposure with the most common forms being earplugs and earmuffs.
Occupational health nurses can play a role in helping reduce noise exposure among landscape workers in a variety of ways. First, occupational health nurses can educate landscapers and groundskeepers about the meaning of safe noise levels as well as how and where exposure to unsafe levels occurs. To assist with this, workers can be taught how to use a noise-level assessment app developed by NIOSH (2024b). Occupational health nurses can also help workers and their supervisors apply components from the hierarchy of controls to reduce noise exposure. Recommendations to replace noisy tools or equipment is the primary approach to use and where noise levels remain difficult to change, developing ways to rotate work tasks during a workday can be proposed to reduce average exposure to safer levels. Providing PPE, such earplugs or earmuffs, is the last line of defense but should not be considered a replacement for hazard elimination and administrative controls which are always foremost strategies.
