Module 5: Legislation: Hearing Loss and Compensation Lecture - Fine Tuning Our Practical Approach To The New Hearing Conservation Legislation

BACKGROUND

• In 1994 the Compensation Commissioner, without consultation and without proper evaluation of financial or logistical impact, issued Instruction 168.
• The previous Instruction was perceived as being unfair (3 average frequencies, etc...)
• II 168 was wrongly considered to be a viable alternative - it suffered from a lack of a proper actuarial valuation.
• It was done unilaterally by the Commissioner
• II 168 was based on American AMA / ENT formula.
• More than a dozen of these AMA assumptions are based on more or less arbitrary considerations.
• The "low fence" of average hearing loss was lowered from 43dB to 26dB without any transitional arrangements.
• 12% of miners immediately became compensatable, compared to 3% previously.
• There was no consultation with the drawing up of 168 - not even with the Compensation Board.
• There was an unwillingness to acknowledge the mistake.
• Scientific base for the document was questioned.
• Implementation cost are tremendous.

NIHL COMPENSATION:

The Compensation Board is a statutory body, established under COIDA (Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act). The Board's Technical Committee is of special interest here.

The Technical Committee:

The work of the Technical Committee, in respect of Hearing Conservation, was as follows;

• it had to address NIHL comprehensively,
• its focus was on prevention,
• 7 supportive modules were developed,
• this led to a new set of instructions, known as Instruction 171,
• these were approved by the Compensation Board at the end of 1999.