SAFETY: How To Wear Soft Foam Earplugs

ROLL, PULL, HOLD – not exactly STOP DROP ROLL

At our Monday morning safety meeting, a few years ago, the subject of the week was Hearing Protection. The company safety officer covered all of the require elements of hearing protection and that along with the documentation sufficed the annual yearly training requirement. The difference this time was that a salesman from a custom hearing protection company was there. He asked for a few volunteers to come forward and demonstrate how they install foam ear plugs. He was lucky and got a volunteer, Bret. Bret rolled his ear plugs and stuffed them in his ears as all of us had done in the past. The salesman showed that much of the ear plug was not in the ear and the the protection was poor at best. He then showed us how to properly install ear plugs.

Here’s the video of what he showed us:  ROLL, PULL, HOLD  

and a breif description: NIOSH Mining: NIOSH Roll-Pull-Hold technique for earplugs | CDC/NIOSH

It’s the small things over time that make a difference.