Raw case counts tell one story. Injury rates per 10,000 employees tell a very different — and more honest — one. We analyzed nine years of OSHA Injury Tracking Application data across 21,000+ establishments to find where workers face the greatest individual risk of occupational hearing loss. The results may surprise you.
The industries with the most hearing loss cases are not the same as the industries where workers face the greatest individual risk. That gap is where real compliance conversations should start.
Why Most Conversations About Hearing Loss Get It Wrong
Ask most safety professionals which industries have the worst occupational hearing loss problem and you’ll hear the same answers: manufacturing, construction, mining. They’re not wrong — those sectors generate enormous case volumes. But volume alone is a misleading metric.
A company with 50,000 employees recording 500 hearing loss cases is performing very differently than a company with 200 employees recording 40. The first has an injury rate of 100 per 10,000 workers. The second has a rate of 2,000. The second company has the real problem. That distinction — injury rate versus raw case count — is the difference between identifying where hearing loss cases accumulate and understanding where workers are actually most at risk.
Hearing Loss Injury Rates by Industry
Cases per 10,000 employees. Source: Soundtrace analysis of OSHA ITA data, 9-year dataset.
Forestry & Logging: The Industry No One Is Talking About
Forestry & Logging’s injury rate stands apart from every other sector in the dataset — not by a small margin, but by roughly double the next-ranked industry. Chainsaw noise, heavy equipment, skidder operations, and log processing machinery all generate sustained exposures well above OSHA’s 85 dBA action level. Most of these operations lack audiometric testing infrastructure — which is precisely the problem a cloud-connected, portable audiometric testing platform is built to solve.
Three Industries on Every Safety Professional’s Radar
Printing & Publishing environments generate significant continuous noise from mechanical presses, die cutters, and finishing equipment. At roughly 258 cases per 10,000 employees, they outpace industries most safety professionals would rank above them.
Fishing & Hunting involves diesel engine noise, winch and hydraulic systems, and processing equipment in enclosed spaces. At approximately 328 cases per 10,000, the third-highest in the dataset — with almost no dedicated hearing conservation market serving it.
Healthcare — Nursing & Residential Care appears in the mid-tier at approximately 235 cases per 10,000 employees. Equipment alarms, laundry and food service machinery, and HVAC systems in older facilities are likely drivers. OSHA’s hearing conservation standard applies broadly — not just to industries traditionally labeled noisy.
What This Means for Program Design
- Benchmark against your industry, not the general workforce — a Wood Products manufacturer at the industry average rate is still at a rate most sectors would treat as a crisis
- High-volume industries need systems built for scale — Food & Beverage and Transportation Equipment have raw case counts driven by large, distributed workforces
- High-rate, low-visibility industries are underserved — Forestry, Fishing, and Printing operations often lack internal safety infrastructure
- Trend over time matters more than a single snapshot — nine years of longitudinal data provides trajectory that annual OSHA reports cannot
Legal Standard vs. Health Standard
OSHA’s action level is 85 dBA TWA. The PEL is 90 dBA. These are legal thresholds, not health-protective ones. NIOSH recommends an exposure limit of 85 dBA — which OSHA treats as an action level rather than a ceiling. Full compliance with OSHA’s standard is, in high-noise environments, insufficient to prevent hearing loss in workers with long careers. The industries with the highest injury rates in our data are not necessarily violating OSHA’s PEL. Many are fully compliant on paper while still producing a steady stream of recordable cases.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under 29 CFR 1910.95, employers must implement a hearing conservation program when any employee’s noise exposure equals or exceeds 85 dBA as an 8-hour TWA. Program elements include noise monitoring, audiometric testing, hearing protection, training, and recordkeeping. The PEL is 90 dBA, above which engineering controls are also required.
Raw case counts reflect workforce size as much as they reflect risk. Normalizing to cases per 10,000 employees removes workforce size as a variable, making industry-to-industry comparisons meaningful. This is the approach OSHA and BLS use in their own reporting.
The analysis is based on the OSHA Injury Tracking Application (ITA), a publicly available database of employer-submitted injury and illness records. The dataset spans nine years and includes over 21,000 establishments. Industries with fewer than 500 total employees were excluded to reduce statistical volatility.
See how your industry compares
Soundtrace provides the audiometric testing infrastructure, recordkeeping software, and medical oversight employers need to build a program that actually protects workers.
Get a Free QuoteWatch a Demo