Mitigating Occupational Hearing Loss in Mining Operations

Hearing loss was by far the most common occupational disease for which Ontario miners lost time in 2018, according to Workplace Safety North, an independent, not-for-profit safety association. And a 2018 study in Quebec found that exposure to noise cost mining companies more than any other occupational injury or disease, coming in at an average of $13.6 million each year between 2010 and 2012.

The question is, why is occupational noise exposure so hard to combat?

The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), the leading technical society of professionals in the Canadian minerals and materials industry, published an article on this issue in their Institute’s CIM Magazine entitled: “The not-so-silent threat.”  HGC Engineering was consulted for our acoustical expertise on this concern during the writing of this article, which can be read here:

This article originally appeared in the November 2019 issue of CIM magazine. The full issue can be found here.