"Myths, Mysteries and Historical Noise Surveys"

• The annual cost of Employer’s Liability to Insurers is circa £750M
• Occupational Disease (OD) accounts for 50% of EL claims at £375M.
• Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) accounts for 80% of OD at £300M

The speaker will argue that a significant proportion of the NIHL costs could be avoided by proactive intervention by Insurers in the management of NIHL risk

"But it is the Employer’s responsibility to manage the deafness risk of his Employees".

Research commissioned across a range of industries has revealed:

1. 56% of Employers are not taking the necessary action to protect their staff
2. This increases to 90% for Call Centre workers’ and to almost 100% for the leisure industry.
3. HSE statistics suggest that 1.3M to 1.7M workers are exposed to unsafe noise levels
4. … and that 100,000 to 170,000 workers have suffered permanent NIHL

Insurance Industry statistics suggest NIHL is a diminishing problem but analysis indicates that this reduction may be short term, as other factors come on stream.

The presentation will offer a seven-part strategy to proactively manage the risk and, in so doing, to significantly bring down the costs of the NIHL risk.

Estimates show that whole-life savings in reduced claims could be 10 to 100 times the cost of the management of the risk.

Speaker Biography:

Dr Stewart Stoneman has been involved in the assessment of industrial noise for 30 years. He is an Expert Witness checked by the Law Society, a Founder Member of the Institute of Expert Witnesses, a Member of the Institute of Acoustics and a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He has been an Engineering consultant, on noise related issues, to household name companies such as Rolls Royce, EXXON, BP, Toyota, Rover-BMW, Ford, British Steel and British Coal. After 16 years as a University Lecturer, he left academia in 1994 to set up Stoneman & Co Ltd and it’s subsidiaries Techno-Legal Services Ltd and Stoneman Solutions Services Ltd which now provide expert problem-solving services to the legal profession, insurance companies and industry, world wide.