I challenged the consensus around traditional hearing protection. Then the ASA came calling...

As the CEO of a fast-growing tech startup, I get a lot of email.

I take a disciplined approach to dealing with my inbox in order to avoid distractions, but recently I received an email that grabbed my attention.

It was from the Advertising Standards Authority. 

They were writing to tell me that someone had complained about our website.

I opened the ‘Advice Notice’ attached to the email. 

It said that someone had read the Our Story page of our website and complained about the following sentences I had written: 

“We know that passive ear defenders, used by millions, simply don’t work. They are effectively a blindfold for people’s ears that puts workers at risk of accident, injury and even death.”

The ASA’s complainant ‘challenged whether the claims were misleading and could be substantiated.’

Well, let’s see…

It’s a fact that passive or ‘dumb’ ear defenders block sound indiscriminately (and are thereby akin to a blindfold for your ears).

It’s also a fact that blocking your ears reduces situational awareness, and data tells us that reduced situational awareness makes accidents and injuries more likely. 

For example, 4 of the top 5 causes of workplace fatalities documented in the UK’s 2018/19 RIDDOR stats are linked to a lack of situational awareness. 

Over in the US a team carried out a cross-sectional analysis of US National Health Interview Survey data (comprising *millions* of records) and found that ~1 in 6 of the adults who had experienced accidental injuries between 2007 and 2015 had some degree of hearing impairment.

What about the claim that ‘passive ear defenders...simply don’t work’? 

Surely, we can’t be so bold as to assert that? 

Without getting too philosophical about it, I suppose the answer depends on your definition of ‘work’.

We have already seen that they do not work when it comes to balancing workers’ health and safety needs (discussion above ?). 

But do they work as a solution to noise-induced hearing loss?  

The answer is ‘also, no’. 

How do I know?

Because if passive hearing protection was getting the job done, we would not be in a situation where ~1 in 5 of the UK’s one million workers in noise have developed hearing loss, tinnitus or other hearing-related conditions (source: IOSH).

Nor would we be in a situation where insurers are paying out compensation for thousands of noise-induced hearing loss claims every year (>15,000 in 2014, the last year for which we have data from the ABI). 

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is quite clear: workers exposed to a daily or weekly average noise level of 85 decibels or more must be given hearing protection. 

So what’s going wrong? 

One answer: operatives aren’t wearing their passive ear defenders or earplugs correctly, or wearing them at all, or have been issued with protection that doesn’t fit.

Well then, will I at the very least concede that passive hearing protection “works” - in that it meaningfully reduces the amount of noise entering the ear canal - when worn and fitted correctly?

Actually: still no.

We can talk about probabilities, lab-based testing, typical situations and so on - but we don’t actually know. Without accurately measuring environmental noise and noise at the ear, getting concrete data, and comparing the delta between these numbers, it’s all just guesswork.

Eave’s hearing protection system has been designed to address all of the problems I’ve just described. 

Our smart ear defenders are always in hear-through mode - harmful noise is automatically blocked, while useful noise is amplified.

They have microphones on the outside and inside of the earcups, allowing them to measure external noise and noise at the ear - so that when you log onto our Peak platform you’ll be able to see exactly how much noise exposure has occurred.

Peak will even show you when headsets aren’t being worn, or are being worn incorrectly.

But I digress.

To the person who complained to the ASA about our marketing, I say this: I stand by every word of what I originally wrote on our website.

I can substantiate the claim that ‘passive ear defenders...don’t work’ - but I put it to you that substantiating the notion that they do is the real challenge.

With the delivery of its Advice Notice, the ASA considers the matter closed. But for us this debate is one we’re prepared to engage in again and again and again. 

Our work is just beginning.

This is a major public health issue - the threat of occupational deafness hangs over 250 million workers worldwide. 

And we won’t let one bad faith complaint distract us from our mission - to end the isolation and loneliness that comes from hearing loss.

If you’ve got colleagues working in noise who are currently being issued with passive ear protection, please do get in touch.

Smart hearing protection solutions like Eave’s are the future; companies that care more about facilitating compliance than actually solving the problem of occupational deafness don’t deserve your business.

We look forward to hearing about your hearing.

www.eave.io