Your employer has a duty to make sure you’re safe from the risk of personal injury whilst at work. This obviously includes making sure that you are not injured whilst going about your everyday job, but it also includes protecting you from risks to your long term health.
One common danger, especially in heavy manufacturing and industrial workplaces, is hearing loss. Many people don’t realise that they can claim for damage to their hearing – or they simply put it down to getting older. However, damage caused to an employee’s hearing is very much a personal injury just as any other injury caused by an employer’s failure to protect the health and safety of their employees.
How to make a claim for Hearing Loss
This type of claim may be called a hearing loss claim, occupational industrial deafness claim, or noise induced hearing loss claim; but they’re all the same thing. If an employee works in an environment where the noise level is above safe levels for long periods of time, they must be provided with equipment to protect their hearing. If the employer did not provide this, or the equipment was not suitable or good enough, then the employer will be liable if their employees hearing is damaged as a result.
The effect of hearing loss on a person’s life can be, of course, quite serious. It can make simple activities such as watching the television, talking on the phone, or socialising with friends much more difficult!
How do you know that work has damaged your hearing?
It is a very straightforward process to check whether your hearing has been damaged because of your work. at The Injury Lawyers we will arrange for you to go for a medical assessment called an audiometry. This measures how good your hearing is compared to other people of your age. It will also show whether any damage to your hearing was caused by prolonged exposure to excessive noise, or whether it’s just the result of the ageing process. The deterioration to hearing that happens as we get older is different to the damage caused by loud workplaces.
If you worked in a noisy environment and you now find that you have to turn the television up, or you struggle to keep up with conversations, it is possible that you are suffering from hearing loss caused by your work.
It does not matter if you are no longer working for the employer where you think that your hearing was damaged, or even if you notice that your hearing has been damaged years after leaving work or retiring. The important thing is that you must make a claim within 3 years from when you become aware that your hearing may have been damaged because of your previous employment (in most cases).
Call us 0800 634 7575 to claim for Hearing Loss today, or if you prefer why not arrange a call back from one of our team on whether you have a claim to make! Just fill out the quick form below and we’ll call you when you have time to speak.
