Is the Army Hearing Conservation Programme working in the Territorial Army?

This was a clinical and audiometric survey of a sample of 299 Territorial Army (TA) servicemen in the London area to identify the priority to be given to and the broad content of a Hearing Conservation Programme for the TA. A questionnaire was used to estimate previous noise exposure and the use of hearing protection. It is estimated that 4% of TA personnel have a hitherto undetected hearing loss which would result in their medical downgrading. Noise is likely to be responsible for three-quarters of such cases. For 86% of the sample TA service is the major source of hazardous noise. There is strong tendency for hearing loss to increase with length of TA service although it is not possible completely to disentangle the effects of age and social exposure.