Noise control at the receiver: Promoting hearing conservation in society

Noise Control Engineering traditionally employs a Source/Path/Receiver model to mitigate the generation of noise in all sorts of activities. The industrial hygiene hierarchy of controls seeks to eliminate noisy processes, to identify substitute processes, or to develop engineering solutions that reduce noise at the Source or along the Path. Administrative controls and personal protective equipment (PPE) are the last resort to reduce noise at the receiver, our ears. The first three decades of my career were as an officer of the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service and I was assigned to the Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. My research focused on developing rating and testing methods for hearing protection devices, standards to evaluate occupational noise exposures, and methods to measure impulse noise exposures. This talk will describe how I transitioned from graduate student in physics to a noise researcher focused on the protection of the receiver's ears.