UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION In the Matter of: ) ) PROPOSED RULES ON HEALTH STANDARDS ) FOR OCCUPATIONAL NOISE EXPOSURE ) Pages: 1 through 187 Place: Denver, Colorado Date: May 13, 1997 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION In the Matter of: ) ) PROPOSED RULES ON HEALTH STANDARDS ) FOR OCCUPATIONAL NOISE EXPOSURE ) Tuesday, May 13, 1997 Mt. Evans Ballroom Four Points ITT Sheraton 3535 Quebec Street Denver, Colorado The public meeting commenced, pursuant to notice, at 9:00 a.m. APPEARANCES: On behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration: ROBERT A. THAXTON, MODERATOR Mine Safety and Health Administration Coal Mine Safety and Health 4015 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 818 Arlington, Virginia 22203 (703) 235-1358 MARVIN NICHOLS, JR. VICTORIA PILATE MICHAEL VALOSKI JAMES CUSTER JACK POWASNIK ROSLYN FONTAINE C O N T E N T S STATEMENT OF: PAGE GARY E. MADSEN, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL WORK 15 AND ANTHROPOLOGY, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY ACCOMPANIED BY: SUSAN E. DAWSON, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL WORK AND ANTHROPOLOGY, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY DAVID S. JAMES, M.D., DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL MEDICINE, 21 UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE JERRY POWERS, COLORADO MINING ASSOCIATION 32 WAYNE JEFFERY, CHAIRMAN, SAFETY COMMITTEE, WYOMING 33 MINING ASSOCIATION STEVEN LAIRD, MANAGER OF LOSS PREVENTION, BELAIR MINE44 LINK DERICK, TECHNICAL SAFETY MANAGER, TWENTYMILE COAL COMPANY 64 JIM STEVENSON, INTERNATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY REPRESENTATIVE, UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA 95 ROBERT A. DOBIE, CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF OTOLARYNGOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER 102 DAVE HUTCHINSON, FMC/SOUTHWEST WYOMING SODA ASH PRODUCERS 124 RANDY TATTON, INTERWEST MINING COMPANY 135 GORDON BRANNON, BIG SKY COAL COMPANY 139 BOB PAYOVICH 147 MELINDA PON, BHP MINERALS 148 171 BERT WISNER, BHP MINERALS 154 LARRY JIM, BHP MINERALS 165 ROGER CONNETT, GLEN ROCK COAL COMPANY 176 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. NICHOLS: Good morning, everybody. Can you hear me in the back? Can you hear okay? My name is Marvin Nichols. I am the Administrator for Coal Mine Safety and Health. Welcome to MSHA's public hearing on its proposed standards for noise exposure in coal and metal and non-metal mining. Let me introduce the rest of the panel. On my far left is Jim Custer. Jim is with Metal and Non-Metal in our headquarters office in Arlington, Virginia. Michael Valoski is with the Office of Tech Support. On the far end is Roslyn Fontaine. She is with the Office of Standards, Regulations and Variances in MSHA headquarters. On her left is Jack Powasnik. Jack, if you want to do a better pronunciation of that name, I would entertain it. Jack is with the Office of the Solicitor. Victoria Pilate, on his left, is also with the same office as Roslyn, the Office of Standards, Regulations and Variances in our headquarters office. To my right is Bob Thaxton. Bob is with Coal Mine Safety and Health in our Arlington headquarters office, and Bob will be the moderator for the hearing today. We have one other person in the audience that I want to introduce, Andrea Hricko. Andrea is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for MSHA. It is good to have you here. We are here today to listen to your comments on the December 17, 1996, proposed rule revising certain portions of the existing health standards for noise exposure in coal and metal and non-metal mines. The hearings are being held in accordance with Section 101 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. As is the practice of the agency, formal rules of evidence will not apply at this hearing. Let me give you some of the background on the proposed rule that we are here to talk about today. MSHA published an advanced notice of proposed rule making on December 4, 1989, as part of the agency's ongoing review of its safety and health standards. The agency's existing noise standards, which were promulgated more than 20 years ago, are inadequate to prevent the occurrence of occupational noise induced hearing loss among miners. In the advanced notice of proposed rule making, the agency solicited information for revision of the noise standards for coal and metal and non-metal mines. The comment period closed on July 15, 1990. On December 17, 1996, in response to information received on the advanced notice of proposed rule making, MSHA published the proposed standard. The agency has developed a proposal that it estimates can reduce by two-thirds the number of miners currently projected to suffer hearing loss, but which it estimates can be implemented at a cost of less than $9,000,000 to the mining industry as a whole. The focus of the proposed rule is on the use of the most effective means to control noise; engineering controls to eliminate the noise or administrative controls, for example, rotating miners' duties to minimize noise exposure whenever feasible. The proposed standard would retain the existing permissible exposure limit. It would also establish a new action level of an eight hour time weighted average of 85 dBa. If a miner's exposure exceeds the permissible exposure limit, the proposal would require that the mine operator use feasible engineering and administrative controls to reduce the noise exposure to the permissible exposure limit. If engineering and administrative controls do not reduce the miner's noise exposure to the permissible exposure limit, the operator must use those controls to lower exposure to as close to the permissible exposure limit is as feasibly achievable. In addition, the operator would have to provide any exposed miner annual audiometric examinations, properly fitting hearing protection and insure that the miner take the annual audiometric examination and uses such protection. The comment period was extended from February 18, 1997, to April 21, 1997, due to requests from the mining community. MSHA received a broad range of comments from over 60 different interests, which include mine operators, industry trade associations, organized labor, colleges and universities and most equipment manufacturers. The comments addressed the primary provisions of the proposed rule such as the action level, the permissible exposure limit, methods of compliance, the exposure monitoring and audiometric testing. Let me talk for a few minutes about the provisions of the proposed rule. Exposure to noise is measured under proposed Section 62.120. The proposed section would require that a miner's noise exposure not be adjusted for the use of hearing protectors, that a miner's noise exposure measurement integrate all sound levels from 80 dBa to at least 130 dBa during the miner's full work shift and that the current five dB exchange rate to measure the level of the miner's noise exposure would continue to be used. An action level of 85 dBa during any work shift or equivalently a dose of 50 percent would also be established under the proposed rule. For miners who are exposed to the 85 dBa action level, the proposed rule would not require the use of engineering and administrative controls. Rather, operators would be required to provide personal hearing protection upon a miner's request, annual employee training and enrollment in a hearing conservation program. The proposed rule would also retain the existing permissible exposure limit of 90 dBa, requiring that no miner be exposed to noise exceeding a time weighted average of 90 dBa during any work shift or equivalently a dose of 100 percent. While the permissible exposure limit would not change, the actions required nor the exposure exceeds permissible exposure limit are different from the current requirements. MSHA's existing metal and non-metal noise standards, for example, already require the use of feasible engineering or administrative controls when a miner's noise exposure exceeds the permissible exposure limit. The existing standards, however, do not require the mine operator to post the procedures for any administrative controls used or to conduct specific training or to enroll miners in a hearing conservation program. Under MSHA's current coal mining standard, a citation is not issued when a miner's exposure exceeds the permissible exposure limit if appropriate hearing protection is being used by the miners. In the event of a violation of the coal mining standard, operators are required to promptly institute engineering and/or administrative controls and to submit to MSHA a plan for the administration of a continuing effective hearing conservation program. The proposed rule would establish a hierarchy of controls for all miners when exposure exceeds the permissible exposure limit. In addition, other aspects of the rule increase protection to miners and further reduce the potential for hearing loss. Under the proposal, mine operators must first utilize all feasible engineering and administrative controls to reduce sound levels to the permissible exposure limit before relying on other controls to protect against hearing loss. Furthermore, an operator would be required to insure that miners whose exposure exceeds the permissible exposure limit take the hearing examination offered through enrollment in a hearing conservation program. Under proposed Section 62.120(f), MSHA would require operators to establish a system of monitoring which effectively evaluates each miner's noise exposure. The proposal would also require that within 15 calendar days of determining that a miner's exposure exceeded the action level, the permissible exposure level, the dual hearing protection level or the ceiling level, the mine operator must notify the miner in writing of the overexposure and the corrective action being taken pursuant to Section 103 of the Mine Act. The proposed rule also provides for hearing protection and training. Under proposed Section 62.125, miners would be given a choice from at least one muff type and plug type hearing protector. Under Section 62.130, miners would be given the required training. Additionally, under proposed Section 62.140, operators would be required to offer baseline audiograms to miners enrolled in a hearing conservation program; that is, when a miner's exposure exceeds the action level. Prior to conducting the baseline audiogram, operators would be required to make certain that miners have at least a 14 hour period where they are not exposed to workplace noise. Use of hearing protectors as a substitute for this quiet period would be prohibited. The proposed rule would also require mine operators to offer a valid audiogram at intervals not exceeding 12 months for as long as the miner remains in the hearing conservation program. Proposed Section 62.150 would require the operator to assure that all audiometric testing is conducted in accordance with scientifically validated procedures. MSHA would also require that audiometric test records be maintained at the mine site for the duration of the affected miner's employment plus at least six months thereafter. Under proposed Section 62.160, operators would have 30 days in which to obtain audiometric test results and interpretations. Additionally, under proposed Section 62.180, MSHA would require, with limited exceptions, that within 30 calendar days of receiving evidence of a standard threshold shift, the operator must do the following: One, retrain the miner; two, allow the miner to select a hearing protector or to choose a different hearing protector if the miner has previously selected one; three, review the effectiveness of any engineering and administrative controls to identify and correct any deficiencies. Proposed Section 62.190 would require that within ten working days of receiving the results of an audiogram or receiving the results of a follow up evaluation, the operator notify the miner in writing of the results and interpretation of the audiometric test, including: One, any finding of a standard threshold shift or reportable hearing loss; and, two, if applicable, the need and reasons for any further testing or evaluation. Finally, the proposed rule would require that the operator provide the miner, upon termination of employment, with a copy of all records that the operator was required to maintain under this part without cost to the miner. This is the third of six hearings. We will also receive comment and testimony on the proposed rule in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 15, in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 28, and in Washington, D.C., on May 30. The hearings will all begin at 9:00 a.m. and end at 5:00 p.m., but, if necessary, MSHA will continue the hearings into the evening hours. In other words, we will stay as long as we have people wanting to testify. A verbatim transcript of this hearing is being taken. It will be made an official part of the rule making record. Hearing transcripts, along with all the comments that MSHA has received to date on the proposed rule, will be available for review by the public. If you wish a personal copy of the hearing transcript, however, you can make your own arrangements with the court reporter. I am now going to turn the hearing over to Bob Thaxton, who will be the moderator for the rest of the day. MR. THAXTON: Good morning. As Marvin said, my name is Bob Thaxton, and I will be the moderator for today's hearing. For those of you that came in a little late, I would like to restate that there is a sign up sheet on the front table just as you come inside the door. If you have not had a chance to sign that, during one of the breaks that we take today we would appreciate it, please, if you would just sign that sheet indicating your presence. MSHA views these rule making activities as extremely important. We realize that by your presence here that you also place an importance on this rule making activity. To insure that an adequate record is made during this proceeding, we ask that when you come forward to do your testimony that you approach the podium, state your name, spell your name and state the organization which you represent. The order of presentation for the public statements will be in the order in which we received requests. The order today is as follows: Patrick James; Gary Madsen; Susan Dawson; David James; Stuart Sanderson; Wayne Jeffery; Steve Laird; Link Derick; Robert Dobie; Dave Hutchinson; United Mine Workers of America represented by Nick Ortega, Rick Snyder, Forrest Addison and Jim Stevenson; Randy Tatton; Gordon Brannon; Bob Payovich; Melinda Pon and company; and Roger Connett. It is MSHA's intent that all persons that wish to make public statements will get the opportunity during this hearing. Anyone who has not previously requested to speak should indicate their intention to do so by coming forward and signing the sheet for speakers that will be located at my far right with Ros. Time will be allowed at the end of the hearing for anybody else that signs up. You will get an opportunity to speak. The Chair will also attempt to recognize all speakers in the order in which they requested to speak. If necessary, though, we reserve the right to modify the order of presentation in the interest of fairness. Also, as moderator, I may exercise discretion to exclude irrelevant or unduly repetitious material. In order to clarify certain points, the panel may ask questions. MSHA will accept written comment and other appropriate data on the proposed rule from any interested party, including those who will not make oral presentations. Written comments may be submitted to Roslyn Fontaine during this hearing or sent to Pat Sylvia, Director of MSHA's Office of Standards at the address listed in the hearing notice. All comments are important to the agency. Should anyone desire to modify their comments or submit additional comments following the hearing, the record will remain open until June 20, 1997. If possible, the agency would request that you forward your comments and provide us with a copy on disk. The comments are essential in helping MSHA develop the most appropriate rule that will improve the health of our nation's miners. MSHA has received extensive comments on this proposed rule. We appreciate the constructive criticism and the hard work and careful thought which your comments represent. On behalf of Assistant Secretary David McAteer and MSHA, I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to each of you for your being here today and for your input. We look forward to your continued participation in this rule making activity. Before we begin with the first speaker, I would like to remind you again that we would like you to sign the attendance sheet and if you are wishing to speak and are not currently listed on the speakers' list that you come forward and sign the sheet with Ms. Fontaine. Finally, again I would like to remind everyone that when you come to the podium please state your name, spell your name and state the organization which you represent. If you have copies of your prepared statement at the time that you come forward to make your testimony, please present them to the panel at that time. With that, we would like to begin this morning's hearing with the first speaker. That would be Patrick James. MR. JAMES: I am Pat James. I am going to pass right now to the next speaker. MR. THAXTON: Gary Madsen? STATEMENT OF GARY E. MADSEN, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL WORK AND ANTHROPOLOGY, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY MR. MADSEN: I will have to get this focused for my bifocals here. Members of the committee, it is an honor to be with you today to present findings from our recent research with western coal miners. Our names are Gary Madsen, G-A-R-Y, M-A-D-S-E-N, Susan Dawn, S-U-S-A-N, D-A-W-S-O-N, and David James, D-A-V-I-D, J-A-M-E-S. Dr. Dawson and I are professors at Utah State University. Dr. James is a pulmonary physician and on the faculty of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and Curtis Hunt is a statistician at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. We would like to identify the study in terms of the sample and the method for gathering the data for this particular study. In the fall of 1995, we conducted a randomly selected sample of 102 current and former male coal miners who were residing in the communities of Raton, New Mexico, and Trinidad, Colorado. The respondents ranged in age from 31 to 92 with a mean of 56. The mean number of years mined was 17. Ninety-seven coal miners worked underground with a mean of 12 years, 43 worked above ground in an underground operation with a mean of eight years, and 29 worked on the surface with a mean of nine years. Thirty-one worked all or most of their mining careers before 1970, 29 worked all or most of the time from 1970 or later but were not currently mining, and 42 were current miners who had worked all or most of the time from 1970 on. In person interviews contained questions about mine related injuries and illnesses, including hearing impairment and the use of hearing personal protective equipment. All of the data were self-reported based upon the perceptions and knowledge of the respondents. In terms of the findings, almost 60 percent of the respondents reported suffering from hearing impairment, which is identified in Chart 1. (Overhead shown.) Furthermore, the highest reported prevalence was found among the pre-1970 miners, approximately 80 percent, compared with about half of the 1970 or later non-working and working miners. The differences between the earlier working subgroup and the later ones were statistically significant using the Pearson chi square statistic. One might expect a higher prevalence among the pre-1970 subgroup. Their mean age was 74, as compared with 52 for the non-working and 46 for the current working 1970 or later subgroups. While the earlier working group was employed prior to the creation of MSHA, the latter two subgroups worked primarily under the MSHA noise regulations which are currently in effect. Certainly this is about 50 percent in terms of the prevalence of hearing impairment. The National Center for Health Statistics conducts annual interviews with a large representative sample of the U.S. population. Included in this survey are percentages of those reporting hearing impairment. The national data are reported for three age categories for males: Under 45 years, 45 through 64, and 65 and older. The coal miner sample allowed for direct comparisons with the latter two age categories. This is presented in Chart 2. (Overhead shown.) We did not compare the 45 years and under because our youngest person was 31. When you go back to childhood, there is not much of a comparison there, so we compared the latter two subgroups. The coal miner sample, in allowing for the comparison, will view the two older subgroups. The 45 through 64 year aged miners reported hearing impairment three times the percentage of the national sample. The 65 years of age and older miners reported twice the percentage of the national sample. Of the 60 respondents who identified hearing impairment, 28 or 46.7 percent attributed hearing problems to noisy mine machinery and blasting. Furthermore, nine or 29 percent of the miners from the pre-1970 subgroup, six or 27.7 percent of the 1970 or later non-working miners, and 13 or 31 percent of the 1970 or later current miners attributed their hearing problems to mining. The subgroup differences were not statistically significant using the Pearson chi square test. The following are examples of respondents' perceptions of noise: "I was a roof bolter for five years. That's where my hearing went." "It's really noisy with the fans used for ventilation. It sounds like an airport." "The noise from the machinery is constant. It leaves your ears ringing. High pitch and constant hum. Dragline house is noisy. Shovel was real loud." "I was a prep plant operator for about ten years. It was noisy in the plant." "When I was underground, the noise from machinery caused my ears to ring for a long time after work." "Everything I worked with was noisy. Even in the mine, the mine cars were noisy." Another commented, "Real noisy in the mine. You could hear it for a mile in there." Furthermore, several miners described their hearing impairment. Typical examples included the following: "I notice the hearing loss the most. It bothers my wife the most." "I can't separate voices in a group. Can't hear the secretary at work very well because she speaks in low tones." "People complain that I can't hear them." "I have a lot of problems understanding people." These were typical comments that we identified. Respondents were asked if they used hearing protective devices, that is earplugs or earmuffs or both. The possible responses were never used, used part of the time, used most of the time, or always used. Only five respondents answered always. Consequently, most of the time and always were combined. In Chart 3, we present the results of the use of hearing protective devices. (Overhead shown.) What is striking about the results relates to results of ever having used any hearing protection. Among the pre-1970 subgroup, only one miner reported having worn any hearing protection at all. It was only among those mining post 1970 that ear protection was used with any regularity, with the highest levels among those who were currently employed. The differences in subgroup use were highly statistically significant using the chi square test. It is noteworthy that among the currently working miners, half reported hearing loss, and almost one-third felt the loss was attributed to their mine work. Our recommendation. The results of this study are generalizable to the Raton, New Mexico, and Trinidad, Colorado, coal miner population. However, there is no reason to assume that they would not be applicable to the entire U.S. coal mining population since the mechanization of mining is system wide. Therefore, this research indicates a need to further reduce the risks of developing hearing impairment among coal miners. Thank you. MR. THAXTON: Ms. Dawson, are you talking next? MS. DAWSON: No. Dr. James will. MR. THAXTON: Is it possible to get copies of your slides that you were using? MS. DAWSON: Yes. MR. THAXTON: Thank you. MS. DAWSON: How many copies? MR. THAXTON: Just one. MR. THAXTON: Dr. James? STATEMENT OF DAVID E. JAMES, M.D., DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE DR. JAMES: Good morning. I am David James, J-A-M-E-S. I am with the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The work I am going to be presenting here is some results of an ongoing screening program of miners in New Mexico, as well as coal miners from southern Colorado. I am also on the staff at the Miners' Colfax Medical Center where this work originates from. The funding for the study is from the Miners' Colfax Medical Center in Raton, New Mexico, as well as a federal Black Lung grant from the Health and Human Services. The title of the work is Hearing Loss in Miners from the Southwestern United States. Since 1987, miners from New Mexico and southern Colorado have been screened through the Miners' Outreach Screening program with the Miners' Colfax Medical Center. This is a voluntary screening program which takes place in the local communities of the miner on a mobile facility and is offered at no charge. The screening protocol consists of an in depth respiratory health and mining work history questionnaire, a chest x-ray, spirometry and pure tone audiometry. Audiometry is performed in a sound booth using a pure tone audiometer at frequencies from 500 up to 8,000 Hz. Testing is performed by a technician who is accredited by the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation. Otoscopic examination of the external ear is not routinely performed as part of our screening protocol. For the analysis of the audiometric data, results are presented from the best ear. Results are not included if there was testing for whatever reason in only one ear or if the subject reported a recent head cold, ear drainage or had been around loud noises in the prior 14 hours. Miners with low frequency hearing loss defined here as a hearing threshold of greater than 25 dB at frequencies of 500 Hz and 1,000 Hz were excluded for this analysis. High frequency hearing loss was defined as a hearing threshold of greater than 25 dB at frequencies of 4,000 Hz and 6,000 Hz. To control for several factors at a time which may result in high frequency hearing loss, logistic regression modeling was used. In this technique, results are presented as odds ratios which express the likelihood of high frequency induced hearing loss compared to the control. An odds ratio or OR of greater than one indicates increased risk of high frequency hearing loss from that factor when you compare it to the control group. An odds ratio of less than one indicates that there is less risk of high frequency hearing loss when compared to the control. The statistical significance for each estimate is given by 95 percent confident intervals. If a confidence interval includes one, then the results would not meet other tests of statistical significance. The results. A total of 1,364 miners had acceptable audiometry results. The demographics of the miners are given in Table 1 and are shown on the overhead. (Overhead shown.) It is primarily a male population. The ethnicity varied quite a bit with a large population of not only a Hispanic white population, but non-Hispanic whites and Native Americans. The mean age of the miners was 56 years of age. Self-reported hearing loss occurred in 48 percent of all miners, and 52 percent reported working in other noisy occupations or industries other than mining. The majority of miners were retired, 70 percent. The predominant type of mining, location of mining and years of mining are given in Table 2 on the second overhead. (Overhead shown.) The predominant type of mining performed was in uranium mining. The predominant type of mining as well as predominate mining location were determined by the maximum number of years that a miner may have worked in any one location or type of mining. Miners frequently worked in different types of mines. For example, 18 percent of miners who worked predominantly in coal mines also worked in non-metal mines, and 17 percent of miners who worked predominantly in metal mines also worked in uranium mines. As a whole, miners did different types of mining work. The predominant location of mining was in underground operations. The mean years of mining was 17 years. (Overhead shown.) In the next figure, the mean hearing thresholds at frequencies from 500 to 8,000 Hz by age group for all miners is shown. The increasing hearing thresholds at higher frequencies in the older age groups is well observed here. On the Y axis we have decibels starting at the top from zero on down to 100 dB. On the X axis starting at the left-hand part of the screen 500 Hz going out to 8,000 Hz on the right-hand side broken down again by age group. Using logistic regression, there was no statistically significant difference in the odds ratios for the development of high frequency hearing loss in different ethnic groups or between active or retired miners. Miners reporting work in the other noisy industries or occupations were 36 percent more likely to develop high frequency hearing loss than miners without this factor. (Overhead shown.) In Table 3, the results of logistic regression modeling are given for the variables of predominant mining type, predominant mining location and years of mining. Although the prevalence of high frequency hearing loss was high in miners who performed different types of mining, there the first column of numbers is the percent of miners who mined predominantly coal, uranium, metal or non-metal, the percent of miners with high frequency hearing loss. That ranges from 68 percent up to 75 percent. Even though the prevalence was high, there was no difference between the groups in terms of the occurrence of high frequency hearing loss. Underground miners were more likely to have high frequency hearing loss than miners who worked predominantly above ground or at open pit or surface mines. For example, above ground miners were 39 percent less likely to have high frequency hearing loss than underground miners. The longer a miner worked, and this is the last set of rows there, Years of Mining, the more likely he was to develop high frequency hearing loss. A miner with more than 20 years of mining experience was 231 percent more likely to have developed high frequency hearing loss than miners with less than ten years of experience. That is shown on Table 3 and on the overhead in that last row, Years of Mining, greater than 20 years. Eighty-nine percent of miners had high frequency hearing loss if they worked more than 20 years, and that worked out to this odds ratio, looking at the overall risk, of 3.31, which is highly significant. Conclusion. In this voluntary sample of predominantly retired miners from southern Colorado and New Mexico, high frequency hearing loss was common and occurred most frequently in miners who were older, had more years of mining and who worked underground. In the current analysis, we did not attempt to determine how much of the miners' high frequency hearing loss was due to age related changes or presbycusis and how much was due to noise induced damage from mining or other work in other industries. All the figures and tables are included in the handout. MS. PILATE: I have some questions. DR. JAMES: Sure. MS. PILATE: You stated in the study that you had 1,364 miners who took the audiometric test. Were there any that refused to take the exam? DR. JAMES: We don't have that information. Again, this is a summary of all individuals who were tested, but we do not have a refusal rate. I could say, though, that that rate is very low since this is a voluntary program, but I do not have the exact -- that information just is not available. MR. NICHOLS: How long do you estimate that it took to give an audiometric exam? DR. JAMES: In our protocol as outlined here, the one person who does the majority of the testing, it takes him about 15 minutes. MS. PILATE: Thank you. MR. THAXTON: Any other questions? VOICE 1: Do you have a percentage of the total mining population versus your sample? MR. THAXTON: I am sorry. Excuse me, sir. You need to direct questions to the panel, not to individual speakers. If you have comments or concerns about the individual speakers' material, that is what the record is held open until June 20 for. MR. CUSTER: Dr. James, is there a reason that you did not make presbycusis loss adjustments from standard tables? DR. JAMES: Partly, yes. Partly we wanted to just present the raw data. At least in my understanding of the literature, there is still some debate as to how best to do that. We are working on that. I think eventually we will attempt to submit this material for publication, and we would try to include some of the age corrections that have been used in the literature. The main reason is, at least in my mind, there is still some debate how best to do that, so we did not do it. MR. CUSTER: Thank you. MR. THAXTON: Dr. James, on Page 2 of your report in the first paragraph under Results -- DR. JAMES: Yes. MR. THAXTON: -- you state that self-reporting hearing loss occurred in 48 percent of miners, and 52 percent reported working in other noisy occupations or industries. DR. JAMES: Right. MR. THAXTON: The 52 percent that reported working in other industries, is that 52 percent of the 48 percent that reported hearing loss? DR. JAMES: No. That 52 percent is the entire sample of 1,364. MR. THAXTON: Thank you. Any other questions? MR. VALOSKI: I have questions for both Dr. James and Dr. Madsen. You said underground coal mining. What type of underground coal mining? Was it long wall? Conventional? Continuous? Do you have that data? DR. JAMES: We do have that data to an extent. We have some information on what the main occupation that the miner would report, but we do not specifically ask them how much time they may have spent on different main areas in the mine, so we have limited data on that. I have not done this analysis looking at changes in audiometric results based on more specific mine site location of work. MR. VALOSKI: Do you record the occupation of the miner or just coal miners in general? In other words, a roof bolter versus a continuous miner operator. MS. DAWSON: We do have that for the 102 miners. Would you like me to read that to you? MR. VALOSKI: Yes, please. MS. DAWSON: The job categories? MR. VALOSKI: Yes. MS. DAWSON: Under roof bolter/timber man, there were 32 miners, and that is 31.4 percent of the 102. Under laborer/pick and shovel category, there were 26 miners. That is 25.5 percent. Under mechanic/equipment maintenance -- Excuse me. What we could do is send you a copy of this paper if that would help. MR. VALOSKI: Yes, it would. MS. DAWSON: Under mechanic/equipment maintenance, there were 24 miners. This is 23.5 percent. Under continuous miner/coal cutter category, there were 22 miners. That is 21.6 percent. Under foreman/supervisor, 19 miners, 18.6 percent. Under long wall operator category, there were 18 miners at 17.6 percent. Under conveyance operator, 17 miners, 16.7 percent. Those categories represent probably the largest number of workers associated with those particular occupations. MR. VALOSKI: Thank you very much. MS. DAWSON: You're welcome. MR. MADSEN: They are not mutually exclusive either. MS. DAWSON: Right. MR. MADSEN: Also in the end of our presentation, the first publication that is identified is being published this year. That will include all of this. It has been accepted for the journal Society and Natural Resources. Included in that are the data that she presented, so there will be two sources to identify that. MR. THAXTON: Excuse me, Dr. Madsen. Could you come to the podium when you are making statements, please? MR. MADSEN: A breakdown of the occupational categories for the miners for the 102 randomly selected sample that we received from Trinidad, Colorado, and Raton, New Mexico, will be published in the journal Society and Natural Resources under the title Working Environment and Respiratory Health: A Case Study of Western Coal Miners. The material that we presented today, with some other materials concerning arthritis and other areas that look at general health, is under review by the same journal. It is also listed. Hopefully it will be published this year. MR. THAXTON: Thank you. Our next speaker is Stuart Sanderson. STATEMENT OF JERRY POWERS, COLORADO MINING ASSOCIATION MR. POWERS: I am not Stuart Sanderson, but I am Jerry Powers, and I represent the Colorado Mining Association in Mr. Sanderson's absence. He apologizes for not being able to be here today, but he is involved in other hearings. The Colorado Mining Association, of course, is an industry association that represents both large and small operators in the State of Colorado and throughout the west. Many of these companies are represented here today or will be represented at other hearings and will present testimony at the other public hearings. Because of Mr. Sanderson's absence, we will only file additional comments following these hearings. We did file comments on April 7, 1997, which we would like to have incorporated into the testimony. As such, that is all I have to say. MR. THAXTON: The next speaker is Wayne Jeffery. STATEMENT OF WAYNE JEFFERY, CHAIRMAN, SAFETY COMMITTEE, WYOMING MINING ASSOCIATION MR. JEFFERY: My name is Wayne Jeffery, J-E-F-F-E-R-Y. I am chairman of the WMA Safety Committee, and I am presenting these comments on behalf of the Wyoming Mining Association. The Wyoming Mining Association is an industrial association that represents bentonite, coal and uranium mining associates throughout Wyoming. Wyoming leads the nation in production of bentonite, coal, soda ash and uranium. We are proud of the fact that our members have some of the safest mines in the country. The Wyoming Mining Association supports MSHA in its efforts to provide a safe and healthy working environment for all miners. While the members of the WMA agree with the need to prevent hearing loss to miners, we disagree with MSHA's position that there is a need to change current regulations. These current regulations are more than adequate to minimize hearing loss. However, MSHA has not enforced them effectively. The issuance of new regulations under Part 62 will only put additional burden on those operators who are presently complying with MSHA. To illustrate this point, the mines in the Powder River Basin have conducted audiometric testing for their employees, and there has never been one case of a 25 dBa shift in over 4,000 audiometric examinations. In addition, there have only been two cases of a ten dBa shift that might be constructed as occupational hearing loss. One of these individuals is also an avid shooter, and the other is a snowmobile racer. We are concerned that the equipment that enhances safety of employees in our operations, for example, two way radios, AM-FM radios, will become a casualty in the pursuit of compliance with regulations. MSHA needs to address whether or not these noise regulations shall have a priority over other safety communications and warning devices. This same scenario would also apply to mine radios used for two way communication, particularly the AM-FM radios that are placed in the operator's cab to help them overcome monotony and drowsiness which could lead in an accident. We do not believe that MSHA in these new proposed regulations has allowed for the advancement of new technology in the area of noise reduction. An example of technology showing potential that clearly would not fit these regulations is the application of active noise cancellation technology and personal hearing protection. This technology does not necessarily lower noise levels, but it attenuates noise by generating a wave canceling mirror image. This is just one example. If these regulations are to be meaningful and exist for another 20 years, they must be written in such a way as to allow for the utilization of the best and most current technology whether it is classified as personal protection or administrative or engineering controls. Since MSHA has published the proposed rules and is seeking comments, the following is the position of the Wyoming Mining Association on some of these areas: First of all, MSHA has indicated that the new proposal will save coal companies over $3,000,000 or $3,500,000. We strongly disagree with MSHA's assessment of savings. In order to comply with this proposed 62.120, the operator has to continue to conduct noise surveys at the same level. The proposed regulations will require surface operators to implement hearing conservation programs for a large segment of our work force, along with extended record keeping. We do not feel that MSHA has adequately calculated the potential cost of engineering and administrative controls should these proposed regulations become law if operators are expected to reduce noise levels to the lowest possible level. Therefore, we ask MSHA to reassess the cost of the proposed regulations on the industry to realistically portray the cost to our industry. MSHA has indicated that there will be a savings of 88,740 paperwork hours in coal as a result of these proposed regulations. We disagree. We feel that the paperwork necessary to meet all aspects of the proposed regulations will actually increase. While it is true that MSHA does not require the maintenance records in the proposed regulations, in reality records will have to be maintained on all surveys, training, audiometric testing, administrative and engineering controls to prove compliance under the proposed regulations. Therefore, we believe that MSHA has significantly understated the time required to comply with the proposed regulations. MSHA has indicated that it is committed to publishing a compliance guide prior to the effective date of the regulations. We would request that all aspects of compliance be contained in the regulations rather than relying on MSHA policy to determine how operators are to comply with the regulations. If MSHA insists on publishing a compliance guide outside the rule making process, then we believe that it should at the very least be available for review prior to the closing of the comments to allow operators to better understand MSHA's position. Too often operators have been surprised by MSHA's interpretation of a regulation which resulted in lengthy and costly litigation to clarify issues. Therefore, we request that the comment period on the regulations remain open until such time as the compliance guide is published. In the supplemental information, MSHA has requested comments on how to minimize the burden on mine operators to provide audiometric examinations for those miners with only a temporary attachment to the mining work force. Applying the proposed regulations to temporary miners, especially at service mines who utilize a high number of specialty contractors to perform certain jobs on the mine site, will be a significant problem if MSHA does not allow for the usage of hearing protection as a method of preventing hearing loss while they are working on mine property. Some major construction projects require the presence of construction personnel for several months. Because contractor employees will work on and off mine property, the mine operator cannot be held responsible for any hearing loss that occurs off the mine property. Unless MSHA provides the operator with the ability to rely on hearing protection, the operator may be forced to conduct a baseline audiogram each time a contractor employee comes to work on the mine property and again each time a contractor employee completes a job. We believe that MSHA should allow a minimum of six months continuous work on a mine before audiometric testing would be required. The proposed rules require that no miner be exposed at any time to a sound level exceeding 115 dBa. There are times just by the nature of the work where miners will be exposed to noise levels exceeding 115 dBa for instantaneous periods of time; for example, a door slamming, a piece of steel dropping on concrete, an engine or starter pressure relief valve. Another example is with regard to blasting warning sirens, ambulances, emergency equipment, a pressure relief valve popping off. Because this noise is infrequent and unpredictable as to occurrence, the only realistic means of preventing exposure is with personal hearing protection. We believe that MSHA should take this into consideration and allow for higher levels of noise exposure up to a maximum of 140 for short durations or instantaneous exposure with hearing protection. The proposed rules require that the primary means of preventing hearing loss should be all feasible engineering and administrative controls. We would request that this be changed to establish that the primary means of preventing hearing loss should be based on what is the most effective and technologically feasible for a given application between personal protective equipment, engineering or administrative controls. MSHA defines hearing protection as any device that has a scientifically accepted indicator of noise reduction. If MSHA by its definition requires that hearing protection have a scientifically accepted indicator of noise reduction, we believe that MSHA should recognize that scientifically accepted value for calculations of noise reduction. Section 62.123(i) should be changed to read adjusted to account for the use of hearing protection. In conclusion, as we stated earlier, the members of the Wyoming Mining Association do support MSHA in its efforts to provide a safe and healthy work environment for all miners. We do, however, take strong exception to the regulations as proposed. We believe these regulations as proposed will not positively impact reduction in hearing loss and may at times expose our miners to higher noise levels. We believe these regulations will have a negative impact on safety and the quality of work for many of our miners. It is clear that there will be an increased cost to operators. It is also clear that these regulations do not allow for advances in personal protection technology. Last, but not least, we request that the comment period remain open until the compliance guide has been published and the industry has had a chance to consider it in their comments. We thank you for this opportunity to comment. MS. PILATE: I have some questions. You spoke of the engineering control costs being underestimated. Can you elaborate on that? MR. JEFFERY: The engineering costs being underestimated? Well, it depends on what definition ultimately comes out under the area of feasible and what MSHA considers to be feasible. There have been stories out there particularly in the metal area where there has been over $100,000 spent to try to reduce the noise level by three dBa on a continuous miner. I guess really it depends a lot on what you determine as being feasible. If money is no object, I think you have underestimated the cost. MR. VALOSKI: Do you have a specific example where somebody requested $100,000 be spent on a continuous miner? MR. JEFFERY: Yes. It was one up there in Wyoming. MR. VALOSKI: Could you provide us with the report? MR. JEFFERY: Yes. I can get that information. MR. VALOSKI: I would like to ask a couple questions on the 4,000 audiometric exams in the Powder River Basin. MR. JEFFERY: Right. MR. VALOSKI: Were they on 4,000 miners? MR. JEFFERY: No, no, no. This is over the 20 years in operation up there. Some of the mines have a hearing conservation program. Not all do. During that period of time, we just totaled them up. There were over 4,000 audiometric exams conducted. MR. THAXTON: Is it possible to get copies of that data? MR. JEFFERY: I will go back to the member companies and ask for it. MR. THAXTON: It could be summary data. We do not want to know the names of the people. MR. JEFFERY: Oh, no. MR. THAXTON: Something similar to what Dr. James and Dr. Dawson and Dr. Madsen presented. MR. JEFFERY: One of the things I think MSHA has to keep in mind, at least in surface mining, is our trucks and our equipment now run consistently somewhere between 84 and 86 dBa. That is the noise inside the cab with the windows rolled up. If you put in the mine radio, the AM-FM radios, everybody is going to be above the actual level. We found that the AM-FM radios, while not required by regulations, have been very beneficial to the safety of the miners for helping them maintain alertness on the night shifts. I just hope that you keep in mind the whole scheme of things, the safety of the people and your interest in noise reduction. MS. PILATE: I have another question. You spoke of the proposal not having record keeping requirements for training and other areas. Are you aware that there are -- MR. JEFFERY: Yes, I realize that there are, but it is going to take a lot more than what is required in the regulations per se in order to maintain the records necessary to assure compliance. MS. PILATE: What in particular are you thinking of? MR. JEFFERY: For example, that we offered anybody that would be an actuarial we would have to show a record of the date and when we offered them to be in the hearing test, the hearing testing program, this type of thing. That is just one example off the top of my head that I can come up with real quick. MR. THAXTON: Have you gone through and prepared like an itemized listing then of what time costs you think are involved with this rule? MR. JEFFERY: I think one of our members will present that today. MR. THAXTON: Today? MR. JEFFERY: Yes. MR. THAXTON: Okay. If they do not present that, is it possible for you to provide us something like that? MR. JEFFERY: I can get it, yes. I believe that they are going to present that. MR. THAXTON: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jeffery. At this time we would like to take a 15 minute break. We will recess until 10:30 a.m. (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) MR. THAXTON: The next speaker will be Steven Laird. Am I pronouncing that right? MR. LAIRD: That is correct, yes. STATEMENT OF STEVEN LAIRD, MANAGER OF LOSS PREVENTION, BELAIR MINE MR. LAIRD: Good morning, Administrator Nichols, ladies and gentlemen of the panel. My name is Steven Laird, L-A-I-R-D. I am the Manager of Loss Prevention of Belair Mine up in Gillette, Wyoming, and I represent Amax Coal West. I am here this morning to comment on MSHA's newly proposed occupational noise exposure regulations found in the Federal Register, Volume 61, No. 243, dated Tuesday, December 17, 1996, Pages 119 through 123. Today I want to talk specifically about three subjects. Number one, I want to talk about Belair's audiometric program, one that we have had in place for ten years. Secondly, I would like to talk about the cost of compliance with MSHA's proposed program based upon our current program. Third, I would like to talk about the requirements concerning feasible and reasonable engineering and administrative controls. By way of background, Belair Mine is located in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. Geographically, the Powder River Basin is bounded on the west by the Big Horn Mountains and on the east by the Black Hills of South Dakota. It extends as far north as central Montana and as far south as central Wyoming. It covers conservatively approximately 30,000 acres. Historically, mining in the Powder River Basin began just about as soon as the settlers arrived in that area. Farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, railroaders -- all kinds of people -- converged into that area. They mined the easily accessible coal to heat their homes, their businesses and their campfires. Most of the early mining in the Powder River Basin was localized. It was small scale. Powder River Basin coal runs the gamut from about 8,200 BTU to about 9,000 BTU, plus or minus a few hundred BTUs in there. It wasn't until the 1970s that coal mining in the Powder River Basin really became large scale. Now, 25 years after the first large mines were put in in the Powder River Basin, there are 24 producing coal mines. These mines directly employ around 5,500 people, and they supply approximately 30 percent of the nation's coal needs. Belair Mine itself where I work was actually opened in 1972. It is a classic open pit truck and shovel operation. (Overhead shown.) If I may, this is an overhead of our truck and shovel operation stripping overburden in the Powder River Basin. That is a Marion shovel. That is a 54 yard bucket. It is loading out a 240 ton cab truck. Sequentially, what we do when we load out overburden is we strip off the overburden, we drill it, we blast it, and then we load it out with these shovels and haul it to the dump. The truck is 240 tons, as I said. It has been likened to pulling your favorite easy chair up to your front room window and driving your house. That is how big they are. After we strip off the overburden, we mine the coal. At Belair, we have approximately an 80 foot thick seam of coal. As compared to people that mine in the east, they might be two to three feet upwards of ten feet. We have one seam. Some mines in the Powder River Basin have three seams upwards of 120 foot thick. The above comments are important, I believe, because they provide a setting for our mining operation. As you can see, we have a large scale, world class coal mining operation. We have mined coal in the Powder River Basin for approximately 25 years. During that period of time, we have had an extremely good safety record. We have won Sentinels of Safety awards in 1987, 1989, and we were runners up in 1994. How do these comments relate to the proposed regulations? Well, several ways. First, the regulations require that companies provide an audiometric testing program for their employees. Amax Coal has provided this program of its own accord since 1987. (Overhead shown.) I do not know if we can get that all on there, but this is a stripped down version of the audiometric testing program that we provide. It was originally Amax Coal Company, but since we were bought out several years ago it is now Amax Coal West. As you can see, this is our policy loss prevention guideline concerning our particular program. Pursuant to this policy, we first require that each employee fill out a personal history form. This allows us to see what they do on their spare time. Many times our miners are a rough and tumble bunch. You know, it is not a prissy operation. The people that you employ are pretty rough characters in some instances. They do a lot of shooting in our area, a lot of hunting, a lot of snowmobiling, snowmobile racing. You name it. If it has a motor on it, they like to do it. They do a lot of skeet shooting, trap shooting and those kinds of things. As you know, these kind of off job activities can greatly impact a person's hearing. We see in our hearing program a lot of right side hearing losses with our people. When you go back into their background, you can see that they are shooters, hunters, or they do other things off the job that we cannot control. When a new employee comes on, the first thing that we do is conduct a baseline examination for that employee. Thereafter, we conduct yearly audiometric tests. They are compared with the baseline and with the previous year's test. Employees found to possess a 25 dBa hearing loss in either or both ears within the speech ranges of 1,000 to 3,000 Hz are referred to a hearing specialist for further testing and evaluation. Employees with a hearing loss greater than 40 dBa within the speech range in either range are required to be equipped with a hearing aide device if the hearing loss is correctable. If it is not correctable, then we review the individual's job responsibilities to insure that it does not adversely affect that person's safety in the job and in the work place. If a person is found to have either a 25 dBa or a 40 dBa hearing loss, then we put that person on a six month testing program. Very seldom do we ever find that kind of a hearing loss in any of our employees. It is our policy that all employees use hearing protection of some kind, usually plugs or muffs. We furnish the hearing protection, and it has been our experience that when used they are highly effective in preventing job related hearing losses. Because we do have a ten year track record of a hearing conservation program, we also have certain facts available to us about that program. For example, because we have to be cost accountable to our corporation, we do track the costs of such a program. MSHA asserts that the cost of the program will be offset by less paperwork for the noise monitoring requirements. We disagree. We believe that the tangible cost of the program will greatly exceed the cost of the current noise monitoring noise regulations and that intangible or undefined costs have the potential of being extremely large. For example, I went through the proposed regulations on a line by line basis and looked at the requirements of these particular regulations. Using the regulations, it is my understanding that companies will have to develop a hearing conservation program, a monitoring program, a training program, a hearing protection program, and they will also have to institute administrative and engineering controls. (Overhead shown.) As you can see, you are going to have one, two, three, four, five major programs. Under each one of those programs, you are going to have to institute sub-programs of various kinds. Now, what I did for this particular handout was try to define exactly what the sub-programs might be. On the right-hand side, the defined sub-program is the area in the regulations, in the proposed regulations, where you would find a mandate or requirement for that particular program. I looked at the implementation costs of our program, the hours per year that I thought, based upon our current information and background, it would take to do the sub-program, the cost of that program and the total dollars just for implementing the program. After the program is developed and implemented, you have the total yearly cost of running that program. As you can see, let's just take an example. If you develop and maintain an audio test program as required by 62.140 et seq., we think that will take 16 hours to develop at a cost of about $30 per hour for a total cost of $480 on that line item. If you follow that same pattern on down through, you can see that the total cost in developing and implementing the program proposed is about $62,760. Thereafter, you will see the yearly cost of developing and maintaining your audio test program -- that is, keeping it up to speed -- is about five hours at $30 an hour, which totals about $150. Those are all, of course, added up on line items at the bottom of each one of the major programs so that you can see the total cost of the yearly cost of administering the program is about $48,000. In the Powder River Basin, if you assume about $50,000 for the cost of administering the program and assume about 5,500 employees employed by the mines in the Powder River Basin, you can see that that is about $200 per employee, if my math is right. I am sorry. Let me rephrase that. If you have $50,000 for your program, and we have 250 people at our mine site. That is about $200 per employee. If you take that $200 per employee and apply it to the 5,500 people employed in the Powder River Basin directly by mining companies, you are already approaching $10,000,000, so it far exceeds in the Powder River Basin the $9,000,000 that MSHA has said is the cost of the program. By the way, I do not have this available at the present time, but I will submit this particular overhead with my written comments at a later date. MS. PILATE: Could I ask a question real quickly? MR. LAIRD: Yes. MS. PILATE: For example, you have to report a hearing loss to MSHA at five hours initially, five hours annually. What is included in that five hours? MR. LAIRD: That will include my time. That will include the EMT's time. That will probably include writing the report, maintaining the records of the report, those kinds of things. The cost that you see and the hours that you see are a conglomeration of our EMT, who keeps track of our noise records, and my time. MS. PILATE: What are you going to do? I am going to guess you are going to give yourself two and one-half hours to do what? MR. LAIRD: You would have to review the audiometric exam, decipher exactly what caused the hearing loss, the kinds of hearing loss. You would certainly have to have some kind of a report for MSHA. You would have to prepare a letter, for example, to send it off to MSHA. You would have a secretary, for example, that would either type your letter, etc. The cost that you see, the five hours, I think are fairly credible when you sit down and start looking at all the manpower associated with making a report and getting that report to MSHA's headquarters. MS. PILATE: I cannot really see it that well. Does that say $60 an hour? MR. LAIRD: On which one? MS. PILATE: In I guess that is the hourly cost or hourly wage rate for that item. MR. LAIRD: I am sorry. I do not see which one you are talking about there. MS. PILATE: Reporting a hearing loss to MSHA. Is that $60 an hour? VOICE 2: It is $30. MS. PILATE: $30? Okay. MR. LAIRD: Yes, $30. MS. PILATE: And that is the average of the mine operator's time? MR. LAIRD: That is what I would estimate would be the average of our particular set up. If we had to develop a program and report to MSHA, I would assume that it would take me about five hours throughout the year for all of the people that we work with. We have 250 people, actually 270, at our property. Any hearing losses that should be reportable to MSHA will have to be reportable to MSHA. Five hours might be a very conservative estimate when you look at that. Any other questions about that particular overhead? MS. PILATE: Do you have an overhead with the cost of your existing audiometric program? MR. LAIRD: I do not have that. I think in the preamble to the regulations the statement was made that the cost of the current noise monitoring program would significantly offset the cost of the proposed program. I guess my comment is I don't agree with that. Our current noise monitoring program, just the noise monitoring program itself, takes about 100 of our EMT hours. At $15 an hour, that is only $1,500. As you can see, if we do this proposed program according to the regulations, it will cost us right around $48,000 to do every year. There is a greatly increased cost in maintaining this kind of a program. I can go on with my prepared text here if you would like, and I can address that. Compare the cost of our noise monitoring program, which runs about 100 EMT hours per year. At $15 an hour, the noise monitoring program costs us about $1,500 per year. The cost of implementing the new regs will be 4,184 percent greater. The cost of operating the program will be 3,250 percent greater. On Page 3 of the preamble to these regulations, MSHA asserts that the cost of control will be significantly offset by the elimination of the paperwork intensive noise monitoring and reporting requirements. Logically, replacing the current program that costs us about $1,500 per year with one that costs 30 to 40 times as much does not seem to result in significant offsets. Finally, I would like to comment on the requirement of proposed Rule 62.120(c)(1) that if a miner's noise exposure exceeds the PEL, the operator shall use all feasible engineering and administrative controls to reduce the miner's exposure to the PEL. The term all is quite inclusive. All means everything. All means all. That is what all means, regardless of the cost, availability or other limiting factors that might be tried. One could even envision a Goldberg design for equipment in which control is piled on top of control to abate noise. I suggest that the term all be stricken. The same concern applies to the term feasible. Feasible is defined in Webster's dictionary as that which is capable of being done. In my experience, a task may be feasible, but it may not be reasonable. For example, you could use administrative control to shut down a coal crushing operation until engineering defines a quieter rock crusher. That may be years. The shutdown would certainly be administratively feasible, but absolutely unreasonable from a business standpoint. I suggest that this rule be revised to provide that engineering and administrative controls not only be feasible, but they also be reasonable. These terms are completely undefined except that in the preamble to these regulations, Page 5, in the answer to Question 4 MSHA makes the comment that a cost that is one percent of revenue does not have an appreciable impact on a mining operation. When I read this passage, I question the conclusion reached by the author. That aside, several other factors arose in my mind. For example, is this one percent of revenue for each and every control? What if a regulator decides that 20 different controls are required? Is that one percent of revenue for each control so that the aggregate could be 20 percent of revenues? I could envision numerous scenarios that would take place if the regulatory agenda included trying to expand the scope of these regulations. Is it one percent? Is it less? Is it aggregated, or is it not? In summary, my concerns with the proposed regulations are threefold. First, our hearing conservation program is simple, it is cost effective, it is successful, and it is voluntary. Our current controls work quite well. Our records show that hearing protection works. (Continued on next page.) // // // MR. LAIRD: As you can see, if we do this proposed program according to the regulations, it will cost us right around $48,000 to do every year. So, there's a greatly increased cost in maintaining this kind of a program. You know, I can go on with prepared text here, if you like, and I can address that. Compare the cost of our noise monitoring program which runs about 100 EMT hours per year. At $15 an hour, the noise monitoring program costs us about $1,500 a year. The cost of implementing the new regs will be 4,184 percent greater. The cost of operating the programs will be 3,250 percent greater. On page three of the preamble to these regulations, MSHA asserts that the cost of controls will be significantly offset by the elimination of the current paperwork intensive noise monitoring and reporting requirements. Logically replacing the current program that costs us about $1,500 a year with one that costs about 30 to 40 times as much does not seem to result in significant offsets. Finally, I would like to comment on the requirement of proposed Rule 62.120(c)(1), that if a miner's noise exposure exceeds the PEL, the operator shall use all feasible engineering and administrative controls to reduce the miner's exposure to the PEL. The term "all" is quite inclusive. All means everything, all means all, that's what all means, regardless of the cost, availability or other limiting factors that might be tried. One could even envision a Rube Goldberg design for equipment in which control is piled on top of control to abate noise. I suggest that the term "all" be stricken. The same concern applies to the term "feasible". Feasible is not defined in Webster's Dictionary as that which is capable of being done. In my experience, a task may be feasible, but it may not be reasonable. For example, you could use administrative control to shut down a coal crushing operation until engineering designs a quieter rock crusher. That may be years. The shut down would certainly be administratively feasible, but absolutely unreasonable from a business standpoint. I suggest that this rule be revised to provide that engineering and administrative controls not only be feasible, but they also be reasonable. These terms are completely undefined, except that in the preamble to these regulations, page five, and the answer to question four, MSHA makes the comment that a cost that is 1 percent of revenue does not have an appreciable impact on a mining operation. When I read this passage, I question the conclusion reached by the author, but that aside, several other factors arose in my mind. For example, is this one percent of revenue for each and every control? What if a regulator decides that 20 different controls are required? Is that 1 percent of revenue for each control so that the aggregate could be 20 percent of revenues? I could envision numerous scenarios that would take place if the regulatory agenda included trying to expand the scope of these regulations. That is, 1 percent, is it 1 percent, is it less? Is it aggregated or is it not? In summary, my concerns with the proposed regulations are three-fold. First, our hearing conservation program is simple, it is cost effective, it is successful and it is voluntary. Our current controls work quite well. Our records show that hearing protection works quite well. We do not see the need for cluttering our successful program with additional mandates, rules or other undefined requirements. On the other hand, the proposed rules are complex and extensive. As you can see, there are numerous -- I think I counted 27 -- subprograms required by the proposed rules. I can visualize, and many terms in the proposed rules are undefined -- I can visualize years of litigation trying to define those undefined terms. Secondly, the mandate found in the proposed regulations are quite expensive. By my analysis, they cost 30 to 40 times more to develop, implement and maintain than our current program. Finally, the clause, "All feasible engineering administrative controls..." seems to be a blank check. This clause must be more clearly defined and some form of reasonableness must be inserted into that clause. Ladies and gentlemen, these are my comments. I will submit written comments, including this particular overhead at a later date, but for today, I thank you for your time and bid you good day. MS. PILATE: I have one more thing. MR. LAIRD: Yes? MS. PILATE: You mentioned earlier in your comments that, as part of your job or as part of the company's policy that you have done, the company has done a cost analysis of the existing audiometric testing program. MR. LAIRD: Yes. MS. PILATE: Is that something that you could submit to us in writing in the form that you've given us? MR. LAIRD: Under our current program, I could do that. I believe, and I'm just recalling this from memory, I believe that costs us about $1,500 per year to do the noise and about $5,000 per year to maintain, implement and administer our current program. But, I will get you those numbers. MS. PILATE: I think we might be speaking on different things. I'm not particularly interested in the cost of monitoring those determinations, I'm interested in the cost of the audiometric testing program, providing hearing protective devices, doing the test. MR. LAIRD: Okay, I can do that. Thank you. MR. CUSTER: Sir? MR. LAIRD: Yes? MR. CUSTER: A question here. To follow up on a statement that you made in regard to miners who demonstrate a 15 or 25 dB loss that at least in the 15 dB or 25 dB loss, you refer them for further evaluation. MR. LAIRD: Right. MR. CUSTER: In those cases where the hearing is correctable, then you go ahead and do that, I assume? MR. LAIRD: Yes. MR. CUSTER: Now, in those cases where the hearing is not correctable by use of hearing aids, what happens to that miner? Does that miner transfer, because you mentioned you do a re-evaluation of their duties. The question I have, then, is do you transfer these miners to other occupations or is their employment generally terminated for reasons that they cannot hear or cannot communicate or work effectively? MR. LAIRD: I would like to answer that question straightforwardly. I don't know that I can. I've been in my present position for two years. In my term here, I've not seen any person like that come through. I'm sure, according to our personnel regs, what we would do is analyze anything like that on a case by case basis. We very seldom terminate anybody for any reason such as you suggested. If they are in a hazardous area where they need to hear, we will probably evaluate their job and transfer them to another job of equal or like character and pay. MR. CUSTER: I was merely trying to determine if your company's policy has an implicit miner transfer provision, for example? MR. LAIRD: It does. I don't think that it is written. We handle those particular types of things on a case by case basis, so we would probably, in my experience, we would probably not terminate a miner, the kind you talked about. MR. CUSTER: Thank you. MR. VALOSKI: You said that you had an audiometric testing program, but you didn't give any results of it, of the testing, like our first several speakers. Do you have any summary results, number of people tested and how their hearing has changed over the course of the, what, ten years of the audiometric testing program? MR. LAIRD: I have those graphs and charts. I provided those to the next speaker, and I think that he will summarize what I gave him and tell you more about the results. MR. THAXTON: You had indicated that you would provide us with a copy of the chart that's on the overhead at this time. You also used a chart of your loss prevention guidelines, employee audiometric testing program, which detailed your program. MR. LAIRD: Yes. MR. THAXTON: Would you be willing to share a copy of that with us, as well? MR. LAIRD: I'll certainly cover that with my BPGM, and if he approves that, I will have no problem providing you with that guideline. MR. THAXTON: Thank you. The next speaker is Link Derick. You're not going to read this to us, are you? (Laughter.) STATEMENT OF LINK DERICK, TECHNICAL SAFETY MANAGER, TWENTYMILE COAL COMPANY MR. DERICK: My name is Link Derick, L-I-N-K, D-E-R-I-C-K, one R. I'm with Twentymile Coal Company, and that's one word. Ladies and gentlemen, Chairman Nichols, I appreciate the opportunity to talk today. I actually have two separate testimonies and I'll stop in the middle. One covers one mine, one previous employer that was bought by our company and then our current. They address separate issues. I'm an active member in the Colorado Mining Association Health & Safety Task Force and also with the National Mining Association Task Force on this noise issue. I'll take just one second and Bruce is going to help me with some overheads. MR. THAXTON: Before you start with your overheads, if you don't mind, we want to adjust the screen, because we have trouble up here seeing the screen. (Pause.) MR. DERICK: Again, my name is Link Derick, and I'm currently the Technical Safety Manager for Twentymile Coal Company, a division of Cypress AMAX Coal Company. Our operation is located near Oak Creek, Colorado. I previously worked at the Orchard Valley Mine in Paonia, Colorado. MSHA has requested any information that demonstrates the effectiveness of hearing protection, especially with regard to earplugs. MSHA has made reference to several studies which suggest that earmuffs should receive a considerably lower reduction rating than they presently have and they further propose the same lower rating for earplugs, due to a lack of information available to evaluate their effectiveness. Furthermore, MSHA states that earmuffs are less effective for low frequency noise, a fact that has always been known, but which should not be expanded to earplugs. Several of the reference reports in the preamble refer to lost data on western mines. Apparently, these documents were purged due to their age, but they will now be retrieved from company records and submitted to MSHA. MSHA has also proposed that industry should rely primarily on feasible engineering and administrative controls for exposures above the 90 dBA levels. MSHA should consider the limited success of reports previously written by their technical support staff, which demonstrate the difficulties associated with controlling noise with engineering controls. I intend to discuss the effectiveness of hearing protection versus the effectiveness of engineering controls. I will present information that will support that hearing protection is effective for exposure to high noise levels, where the benefits of engineering controls are questionable. Some background. In the early 1980s, extensive work and research on the noise levels and resulting employee noise exposure from the newly purchased fleet of four wheel drive haulage units was undertaken at the Orchard Valley Underground Coal Mine, in conjunction with MSHA technical support from Denver. I will submit four MSHA technical support reports, two which summarize engineering control efforts and two which summarize the effectiveness of personal protection. I will submit an internal company report written at the same time. At the conclusion of this project, MSHA technical support personnel stated that this work was the final supporting data that the national office would use to support the use of hearing protection to comply with the noise regulations and underground coal mines, which would be similar to surface coal mine operations. This data could be regarded as actual experiences versus expert testimony. However, the benefit of this data may actually be greater than any of the professional reports I reviewed in the preamble of the proposed regulations. At Orchard Valley, we realized that our newer fleet of haulage units drastically raised the employee noise exposure levels. Therefore, we met with the MSHA district manager, who offered technical support and assistance from the noise control group of District 9, which proved to be invaluable. These experts in this field who possess the equipment to match their skills defined the problem and implemented sound engineering controls. These experts suggested a reasonable and practical approach concerning the type of controls that would be feasible and would not cause overheating, safety or other problems. If you'd put that first overhead up? This overhead illustrates the noise exposures that were involved. The differences between monitored and unmonitored noise dosimeter samples and the limited effectiveness of engineering controls. These were, after all, engineering controls recommended where implemented. You can see we were dealing with eight hour exposures in the average of an 97, 98 decibel area. While in the process of evaluating several engineering control recommendations, the haulage units did overheat, the noise reduction fiberglass fan disintegrated, and the sound barrier material became a nuisance by collection of water or other materials and interfered with adequate head room. The overall benefit obtained appeared to be approximately a three decibel improvement in noise levels, however, the difference in noise exposure by dosimeter readings was negligible. Actually, that ended up being about one tenth of a decibel. It quickly became obvious that engineering controls were not the answer to our immediate concern, and an effective hearing conservation program would be required. At that time, hearing protection was not accepted or utilized, except when noise caused pain or where it was obvious that protection was required. In order to encourage use of proper hearing protection, we explored methods to demonstrate the negative health impact and the hazard of noise. A joint decision was made by MSHA and the company to perform before shift and after shift audiograms on high risk employees. This route was chosen because hearing loss is a result of daily temporary threshold shift over the employee's working lifetime and beyond. A textbook description demonstrates that hair cells in the ear canal will wear down after each exposure and recover after each rest period. Eventually, those hair cells fail to return to the normal position. It becomes apparent that an employee who had a daily temporary threshold shift that returned to normal during a rest cycle, then a measurable temporary threshold shift should occur each day. A more significant threshold shift should occur when the noise exposure is greater. If noise exposures were similar each day, the temporary threshold shift should be easily distinguishable if effective hearing protection was utilized. Because of the importance of demonstrating the need for hearing protection, MSHA did not object to performing these tests with and without hearing protection being utilized. On the screen now is a copy of the approval letter. The bottom paragraph is from the district manager. It says they would cooperate in anyway and would have no objections to not wearing hearing protection. When MSHA technical support finalized their observations and conclusions of the audiometric testing data from the before and after shift tests, they did not include the shifts which did not utilize hearing protection. There are about two pages of overheads, Bruce, if you'd put it up quickly, that showed just the format that MSHA technical support used. They were interested in the before and after shift, temporary threshold shift for categories like frequencies, age of miners, and a few other variables that are all in the technical reports. As shown on the overhead, we both added up the hearing levels and divided by the number of frequencies tested in order to reach an average number for the audiometric data. If you'd put that next overhead up, please, Bruce. This overhead shows a typical audiometric test and an example of how we calculated the single number for comparison purposes. Because of the type of printout produced from the audiometric test, it was easy to arrive at an estimate of the hearing level. You can see what we're doing there. We take all 14 frequencies, divide by 14 and come up with just a single useful number to talk to the employees with. The equipment used at this time was MSHA technical support equipment. The final audiograms, after we used them for our internal use, would be shipped to Denver. Because we wanted to minimize the potential that the temporary threshold shift would return to normal before the after audiometric test, we only tested employees who trammed the haulage unit up a significant grade to the surface and performed the after test as soon as possible thereafter. Several sample summary sheets of the test employees will now be reviewed. The haulage unit noise levels were higher in the lower frequency, which demonstrates that earmuffs were not the optimum type of protection from a diesel engine, diesel fan noise source. However, no changes were undertaken until several additional tests were performed. This graph indicates the severity of a temporary threshold shift, when hearing protection was not utilized, and demonstrates that the measured temporary threshold shift was reduced when the employee was switched from earmuffs to earplugs. The haulage unit noise levels were high in the lower frequencies. If you look at that graph, it may not look as significant as it is. If you look at the stars, those are after shift audiograms, when hearing protection was not worn. That difference in the first few days there is an average of 17 decibels over all 14 frequencies, so the number is a little more significant than it appears. You can see it on the days the hearing protection was worn, we still were not happy with the before and after shift temporary threshold shift, so the last columns over is that employee was switched from earmuffs to earplugs and that temporary threshold shift was closed. The next graph illustrates the effective use of hearing protection and the increased threshold shift when hearing protection is not utilized. Again, the stars are shifts when hearing protection was not worn. In this case, there are some teletram out that says no. That's because the mining section was real close to the mine portal. The next graph -- this illustrates that when an employee is exposed to higher noise level haulage unit, the temporary threshold shift higher than the other employees still existed when earplugs only were utilized. This employee was eventually instructed to utilize both earmuffs and earplugs, thus minimizing the temporary threshold shift. So, by tracking the audiograms, you can look at the dosimeter reading averaged around 101 on this teletram for an eight hour shift. So, it was significantly higher than the others. Later, in an effort to control noise through an effective hearing conservation program, MSHA assisted us in evaluating the effectiveness of earmuffs. They did this by installing recording noise instruments inside and outside earmuffs, while operators, or while employees operated their haulage units in a normal manner. The overhead, the results of these tests indicate an almost exact match of the R rating for two types of earmuffs, as expected. Protection from lower frequencies was less than higher frequencies, however, noise levels are also lower in those lower frequencies. If you'd put the next overhead up first? That shows the octave band breakdown of inside and outside the muff. The top part is the tape that they use to determine the octave bands. Over on the left side, it's clear that the protection from lower frequencies is less than higher frequencies. The next two slides or overheads are examples of the teletram noise, actually the diesel haulage noise, with the black being the difference with and without control. That's what we gained in the black range. But, as you can see, the lower frequency has lower levels of sound, too. You can put the other one up. It's just similar. In conclusion, I believe that the use of hearing protection is critical to an effective hearing conservation program. I also believe that relying on engineering controls, in order to avoid exposure to high levels of noise, would be difficult and may ultimately lead to a near compliance level of achievement without encouraging the use of hearing protection. The type of testing which was done at the Orchard Valley Mine could be repeated in other mines, if the effectiveness of hearing protectors continues to be of primary importance to MSHA. In that book, there are four MSHA technical support reports and then quite a bit of Orchard Valley reports. I can't retrieve, we don't own that mine at the current time, and I couldn't retrieve the actual audiograms, because they were forwarded to MSHA tech support. I was hoping to be able to retrieve those so I could look at individual frequencies now that this issue came up. I'm still going to try to pursue that data. If you have any questions, it would probably be better now before we move on to Twentymile comments. MR. THAXTON: Proceed. MR. DERICK: As I stated before, my name is Link Derick and I'm currently the Technical Safety Manager for Twentymile Coal Company, division of Cypress AMEX Coal Company. Our operation is located near Oak Creek, Colorado, with the neighboring cities of Craig and Steamboat Springs close by. Our mine consists of two continuous miner sections and one long wall section. We presently produce approximately six million tons annually. We're planning in progress to produce more than eight million tons annually. The mine has steep haulage ways that range from 6 percent to 26 percent entry grades, with up to 17 percent cross-cut grades. The continuous miners we utilize have dust scrubber systems and auxiliary fan face ventilation. The long wall shearer speed is normally operated at approximately 125 feet per minute, and shift production of 18,000 to 22,000 tons is frequently reached. The mine operator operates on ten hour shift schedule, because of the long drive to the property and employee preference. These facts are pertinent to the comments I'm about to make. Although many of my comments will touch on a variety of subjects, my focus is towards MSHA's request for data on employee noise exposures, related use of hearing protection and the related audiometric testing results. MSHA has stated in the preamble that because information is unavailable to correlate the above items, and utilizing only reports submitted to MSHA from NIOSH, the hearing loss observed by NIOSH in a select group of audiograms, either is a result of ineffective use of hearing protection or the lack of use of hearing protection. Our experience indicates that hearing protection is effective and must be worn in all areas or occupations where the six month noise surveys indicate exposures above 90 decibels. The process utilized to assemble this data has been intense. First, since our employees are offered a complete voluntary wellness physical each year on their birth date at their choice of several participating medical clinics in several communities, assembling this data takes time. These physicals are considered to be confidential, and each request for audiogram history was accompanied by a signed medical release form. I'll put that up after. The copy of the release form by letter sent to each employee is displayed. If you'd put the other one back up, Bruce, just for a second, this wa sin answer to MSHA's statement about the data correlating exposure to work history to audiograms, to the use of hearing protection was not available. That's what we requested our employees to provide. If you could put the other one back up, Bruce? We mailed out 385 of these medical releases to each employee, did find out that then, when we wanted a follow up audiogram, the clinics insisted on a new, fresh date, because they would not release any information without the available release. So, it was kind of a burdensome process. Knowing that the process of receiving the audiometric testing results would be slow, all of the available six month noise survey data that is submitted to MSHA was reviewed from the start of the mine until December of '96. Two data bases were established. One compiled with long term employees who were still at the mine, including some high risk employees that are still performing the same duty. A second data base was established that included all over exposures reported to MSHA in the six months surveys. Noise dosimeters were used for the data collecting. The over exposures are being submitted as they were compiled by miner and by occupation, so three sets of noise data are being submitted. This is an example of taking all of the over exposures reported to MSHA and then selecting it by occupation. These are just examples of what are in the book. The next is then separating them by name, and as we said on the medical release, no names would be used, but so you can tie these to some audiometric results and everything, the miner's name has been turned to miner number. So, that was the first chart, but this is separating it by their job title. The third was targeting people that we could that were at the mine for the longest. The mine started underground coal mining in 1983, so this was taking a select group of people that were still at the mine. Both target groups, high risk and long term employees, were personally contacted for releases and follow up audiograms if a current one was not available. The noise exposure data and audiograms have been assembled on a two page report for each employee. This data is corrected for aging for the MSHA method and also for the OSHA method. We recommended that the OSHA method replace the MSHA proposed methods for noise regulations. Only the first and last audiogram were used for age correction, however, some of the intermediate audiograms may normally have been used for a new baseline. When the medical profession would go through these, there may be one of the cases where a more recent one would be a new baseline, but I didn't correct for that. By assembling data on both high risk employees and long term low risk employees, if hearing protection was affected, it should be difficult to distinguish which type of employee was being studied. This was the apparent noticeable result. If you could go ahead and put up the first, and then we'll just look at that. This is page one of a two page summary of each employee. It's all their audiograms. The bottom two are just looking at their first and last audiogram. If you'd put the second page up, I'm going to reuse those, Bruce, too. This is then taken, the audiometric results, correcting them for the OSHA and the MSHA, and then at the bottom is the summary data, their exposures. If we quickly look at the overexposures reported to MSHA, there's quite a few columns on there. One is the percent dose -- I know it's hard to read, but I'll just explain them -- the percent dose that would have to be used to be reported to MSHA with a corresponding dBA level for 480 minutes and then we're on ten hour shifts, the dose is corrected for the length of shift, and a new dBA average, and then the hearing protectant value that is submitted on the MSHA noise card is included, and then it's an adjusted dose. What's important on that is when we're talking about noise protection, the length of shift, the actual percent dose is not what's important. It's the equivalent, actual dBA average that's important, because you're trying to use a hearing protector for that level of noise, not the dose of noise. One major difference that could be noticed was the impact of apparent exposure and loss to one ear from big game hunters and target shooters. Many of our employees at our operation hunt big game. Some of the largest elk herds in North America are bordering our mine site. I asked our environmental department, who administers hunting on our mine property, like I say, the clerk informed me that we also have a handicap season, which is one of our benefits that we do for the local area and all over Colorado, plus some of our customers. But, we have 380 people. You can see this is just on mine property that we had 260 people apply for hunting licenses of big game. Most of them succeed. If you put the overheads back up, the first audiogram, please -- if you put that up, you can see the gap on the left ear. If you put the second page up, now. If you notice, the right ear actually had on the MSHA, 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000 Hz range he actually gained versus hearing versus aging, I'm sorry, by one decibel. Yet, on the left ear, he had a 12 decibel. I personally know this employee's family is from Paonia all the way up through Cypress Empire and over to the Cypress Twentymile, very avid hunting family. In fact, his brother was a safety rep for me at Orchard Valley and when the elk were starving, I lost him because he'd quit if I wouldn't let him go out and feed the elk. So, very active hunting family. Typical one ear loss. The next audiogram, the employee with the right ear loss displayed was asked if he was a left handed hunter. The comment back was, how did you know that? We know that from this data. We continue to encourage hearing protection while target shooting and suggest the use of a single opposite handed earplug while big game hunting. That is, you're not going to talk the big game hunters into wearing their typical sighting ear protection, but our recommendation now is, if you're right handed, where a left ear plug. That way, you can still talk and that when that instant elk jumps out there and you want to shoot, you're going to turn a protected ear. The proper hearing protection while off the job can be stressed to reduce the potential of a standard threshold shift. However, the off the job exposure must be considered when investigating the on the job effectiveness of hearing protection. In gathering this data, one employee's audiograms were unusual and warrants discussion. Put the next up, please. It should be miner 19. It should have been in order there. This miner was asked to participate because of his length of time operating a shearing machine on the long wall face. He suggested that we use someone else, since he had a serious ear problem in the left ear, from an accidental gunshot going off in the 1980s, before coming to work for Cypress Coal. I told him that did not matter, because the baseline would indicate the impact of the traumatic injury, which required surgery. In obtaining the audiograms, three early audiograms did not indicate this loss. He was then sent for another test in 1997, which indicated a very severe loss in the left ear. We have been working with the specialists who are assisting this employee. The hearing loss was present in 1995, when the employee saw the specialist. They have stated that a loss can occur in this delayed manner. The specialist recommended that we remove this employee from the database, but we believe including this type of data supports the use of medical explanations for unusual audiograms. The proposed regulation also recognized this situation, however, as proposed, this may only be a decision of the medical profession. Looking at the right ear is an example of an effective use of hearing protection. This operator, you can't get him to even eat lunch if that shearer is running, and his right ear shows an actual gain in hearing versus age. But, if you look at his left ear, a 70 dBA loss, which didn't show up on three baselines. I thought because it didn't show up on three consecutive earlier tests, it's kind of a good example of a medical situation. The specialist continues to work with this employee. They're doing an MRI, doing lots of others, to make sure it is strictly the result of a gunshot wound, or gunshot accidently going off in his ear back in the '80s. Okay, we've discussed some of the unusual findings, but now let's look at the typical findings. We targeted three occupations that have regular overexposures: long wall shearer operators, continuous miner operators and diesel scoop operators. All of these employees work ten hour shifts. I was going to put back up the list of the overexposures, but I'm not going to do that. Previous overhead showed the effect of the extended shifts, and I covered it there, where we have to look at what I'm trying to present testimony on, the effectiveness of hearing protection. It's important that we define the underlying dBA level, not the dose. A lot of our other operations work 12 hour shifts. The dose could be way high, but when you do them on a corresponding dBA level to produce that, it's a lot lower. MR. VALOSKI: Before he goes on, could you please explain that last statement? MR. DERICK: Right now, if we put a noise dosimeter say in our operation where Steve Laird was talking about, and they run 12 hour shifts, it's going to produce a dose. Most people are going to take that dose, look at the corresponding eight hour dBA equivalent, okay. MR. VALOSKI: Okay. MR. DERICK: However, the 12 hour dBA level is much lower than that. So, what I'm trying to emphasize is how little we need of the R rating of a hearing protector to actually provide adequate protection. If hearing protection is being utilized at either level, and we're talking about eight hour or ten or 12 hour, the level of protection required from the hearing protector is very low to obtain an equivalent low 80 level of noise exposure. This would reasonably imply that the audiograms of the two groups, high exposure wearing hearing protection and low exposure, not wearing hearing protection, should be similar. The next overhead are three examples, I'm going to put two examples of low exposure. Can you put the second page up, please? This is a typical low exposed female office worker. In this case, the low exposure resulted in seven decibel gain and a four decibel gain, respectively, in the two ears. The next is a low exposed underground miner. If you put the second page up, it will show the exposures. You can see on the six months back to December of '84, this employee is typically a beltman fire boss. All of his exposures using a 90 dBA threshold were in compliance, and he showed a two decibel loss and a zero decibel gain or loss in the other ear. The next one, in case you want to ask any questions, I put my own up. I know there's questions about presbycusis and aging -- of course, I'm just about ready to turn 30 -- the numbers lie up there. I wanted to put my own up there, in case there are any real questions. You look at the left ear, starting to see significant threshold shift. If you then correct for aging on the second page, you can see over my time at Twentymile or Empire and Twentymile, had an eight decibel gain versus aging in my right ear, and a four decibel loss in my left ear. Now, let's quickly look at several examples of high risk occupation employees. The scoop operators travel extremely steep grades throughout their shifts, which require high RPM and work load. The continuous miner operators have additional noise sources with the auxiliary fan noise and dust scrubber systems on all of the continuous mining machines. The shearer operators are sometimes cutting coal the entire shift. Shift tonnages of 25,000 tons have been reached and this level is expected to be fairly common in the future. To look at the entire -- well, let's put some of those up. We'll go through them. This is scoop operator with the ages, I'm having trouble seeing, but I think they're nine years difference. I think it was 49 to 56. You can see the overexposures reported to MSHA. If that is a snapshot in time on a six month noise test, we take it every working day those are the levels he's exposed to. You can see high levels and with hearing protection versus the aging process, he's actually gained in his hearing threshold by five decibels in both ears. Put the next one up is another scoop operator that was our primary material handler for years in the mine. Again, he had a one decibel gain in one ear versus aging, a four decibel gain versus aging in the other ear. Next, there are some shearer operators. You can see the length of the time operating the long wall shearer. The time operating the long wall shearer, five decibel loss, standard threshold shift, six decibel. This is another shearer operator, gained in one ear, lost in the other. I do need to ask him about whether he's a hunter, and I'm pretty sure he is. To look at the entire database of this limited study, I've developed a chart of anticipated results as compared to the actual results that are indicated by the data. It's important to remember that employees selected for the study were selected by length of service and frequency of overexposure. The employee selection was made prior to obtaining any audiometric data. We actually biased the study with high risk employees so that we would be investigating the worst case situations. The fact that hearing protectors are being regularly utilized can easily be confirmed by the purchasing data of such devices. We utilize quite a few earmuffs, but usually as an additional control, the earplugs. An example of this is the concern of flying chips of coal from the long wall face. The shearer operators will regularly wear earplugs for noise control, whether or not their air stream helmets are being used, and then utilize earmuffs on the air streams for protection from the possible flying coal. The use of earplugs is so economical that boxes are provided throughout the operations near any high risk area. You can see that that represents probably under 25,000 sets of earplugs, just 12 month purchasing data taken off the computer. With a number of employees and defined occupations of reported overexposures to MSHA, compliance requiring hearing protection has never been a concern for MSHA or company officials. Use of hearing protectors is taken for granted, as employees consider it a matter of culture, similar to wearing safety glasses at all times or never operating the shearer without air stream helmet protection. In fact, hearing protection really seems to be the easiest employee adoptable device. It's one that, as far as I've seen, all the way back to the Orchard Valley data, it's not even a question. Administrative controls, rotating operators in any one of the high risk areas is only feasible when it's performed at the convenience of the normal operating practices. Some crews do this for flexibility and some do it for training reasons. When mining conditions warrant, there are times when only a select few employees are chosen to operate certain pieces of equipment. We are discriminating when it comes to a selection of scoop operators to drive on steep grades and severe cross-pitches. Similarly, we are selective on who operates the continuous miner in steep cross-pitching, steep grades or adverse roof conditions. Not all employees are capable of maintaining proper horizon control while walking 11 miles on a steeply pitching long wall face, wearing an air stream helmet and other safety equipment. These dedicated employees don't want to perform other tasks, and it is difficult to find suitable replacements. It takes an extended period of time to train someone to be a skilled professional miner in today's current technology. The fact is that administrative controls are implemented as a matter of normal operation, rather than a matter of compliance with the regulation. Exceptions to this are areas where the only manner of achieving proper hearing conservation is through administrative controls due to very high noise levels. We believe that hearing protection provides adequate protection to our employees, relative to the levels of exposure that we experience and that the results of audiometric testing verifies this effectiveness. In conclusion, we support the proposed regulations for the 80 dBA measuring threshold and the 85 dBA action level. We also support the adoption of the MSHA method of allowing hearing protection in the exposure ranges from 90 dBA to 100 dBA. In this range, compliance would be achieved with the method of subtracting seven dBA and dividing by two of the R factor of each hearing protector. These employees would be part of the action level group requiring audiograms. Extended shifts that have noise levels below 100 dBA would be adequately protected with the use of hearing protection. Exposure to over 100 dBA would be addressed by the feasible and reasonable engineering controls first, and/or dual protection at 105 dBA levels, as specified by the regulations. Additional written comments will be submitted before the close of the public record, however, we suggest that MSHA keep the record open for a longer time period so that additional audiometric data can be assembled. We are participating with the National Mining Association that requested a 60 day opening of the record past the close, and I'm not sure where that stands as of yet today. Part of what Steve Laird talked about is, as Cypress AMEX, there will be additional speakers in Las Vegas from our topper operation in Cerita and Baghdad, and then audiometric data will be forwarded to the National Mining Association for additional inclusion. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. MS. PILATE: I have some questions. On the overhead that presented the audiometric testing data, it stated the person that gave the exam was the company safety manager, yourself. Are you normally the person that administers the exam? MR. DERICK: You are looking at the Twentymile or the Orchard Valley? MS. PILATE: It was one of the first ones. MR. DERICK: One of the first? That was all before and after shift done right on the property for evaluation of hearing protection, not really establishing baselines. All of them were done under my direction. I have been, I am a certified audiometric tester, but I haven't kept that up current in the last decade. One of the concerns I had personally is back in the 1980s, with the help of MSHA tech support, we felt we adequately chose the right direction for protecting people from loud noise, and that was hearing protection. Then we see, 13 years later, we see reports written as early as the mid-80s that questioned the use of hearing protection, but we were never notified of now that questionable use of them. So, noise has been one of the many issues from mine rescue to mine fires to ventilation to roof control that we worked on that I felt we really had the right answer, and that was encourage hearing protection and insist upon it in the high risk areas. When I went to Twentymile Coal, they were a step ahead of where I'd been at Orchard Valley, not doing the testing results, but it is just without question, you will wear hearing protection. You will never operate the shearer without an air stream helmet, and you will never work anywhere without safety glasses. Those are just imbedded in the culture of that operation. MS. PILATE: On the records for the first company, it stated that the tests were administered, one was given in the training room, the other one was given in the mine office. Was a hearing booth used in either case? MR. DERICK: No. In the MSHA tech support report, you'll see where they did background testing of those rooms, to make sure they would use the data. We used the audiometric testing as a safety tool versus a medical tool. It was trying to evaluate and demonstrate to employees -- some of the other employees in that sheet refused. You'll see where there is no shifts where they didn't wear hearing protection, because once we went through the whole subject, they refused to work the shift without hearing protection, which they were working them without universally until all this was analyzed. MS. PILATE: How long do you estimate that it takes to administer an audiogram? MR. DERICK: The actual test itself is probably about 15 minutes, once you get the person there. In order to complete this -- when I said we selected that group, as of Friday, I had one person that promised he'd go in and get his after, and another guy that was one of the first miners, and their first day back to work was Friday. We put him in the car, drove him 38 miles to Craig and got the sample and brought him back. I mean, that's how much we wanted to get a complete database of the people we chose. On a normal, it would be part of their wellness physical, and so the timing would be, when I have mine, it's about 15 minutes, but it's while you're waiting for them to look at your chest x-ray. If you have the instrument on site, which I know some of our other operations in Colorado do it with a booth on site, I would assume probably 20 minutes would be an accurate timing. MR. THAXTON: Thank you, Mr. Derick. It's now 11:50 and we're going to recess until 1 p.m. for lun