Safety climate, hearing climate and hearing protection device use among transportation road maintainers

Background It is important to understand workplace factors including safety climate that influence hearing protection device (HPD) use. We sought to investigate the association between HPD use, safety climate, and hearing climate, a new measure specific to hearing. Methods A survey was developed and distributed among transportation "maintainers" who perform road maintenance and repair. A new hearing climate measure was designed by adapting a safety climate measure. HPD use was assessed by asking workers how often they wear HPD while in noise. The differences in safety climate and hearing climate were compared by the frequency of HPD use using analysis of variance. Results Among 166 maintainers, 54% reported always or almost always wearing HPD while noise exposed. High-frequency HPD users reported a statistically significant higher safety climate (P = 0.004) and hearing climate (P = 0.003). Conclusions Hearing climate predicts the frequency of HPD use and may be a useful measure when assessing and improving hearing conservation programs.