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Industrial deafness can take on many forms; indeed, even the name can sometimes be misleading, as it not always caused in industrial settings. For example, many workers in hospitality and entertainment settings, not traditionally considered industrial, fall prone to the kinds of hazards typically associated with industrial deafness and the compensation claims that result for the condition.
Office workers too are prone to noise hazards. Although they are unlikely to be consistently exposed to sounds loud enough to cause deafness, there can be another, less marked, but perhaps more invidious effect.
I once had a job that involved working in an office. It was fairly typical office - rather like The Office, actually - with a staff of about 20 workers. For a while it was fine. There was nothing there to irritate me more than my colleagues themselves. And, unless we are especially intolerant, we can all forgive a person their stinky food, gormless chewing and periodically inane verbal ejaculations.
It was only when a radio was brought into the office, at the behest of a senior, music-loving colleague that things got really bad. Suddenly I found myself subjected to a full eight hours of music a day.
It is not that I am an audiophobe, it is simply that I, like everyone else, do not have undiscriminating taste in music. In fact, I like to think of myself as something of an eclectic, enjoying a whole panoply of musical styles, from Dolly Parton to Duke Ellington and from Laura Marling to Gustav Mahler. I can see no conceivable reason as to why I should suffer for not having completely catholic taste. If can't make the leap from Schubert to the Sugababes, should my nerves be made to suffer for the sake of those who do?
Yet, even with the music I love, I find it hard to listen for more than a couple of hours. All minds need peace - however much the post-MTV age conditions us to believe otherwise - so when I used to reach the end of day at my former place of employment, having been assailed by eight hours of unsolicited noise, I used to feel like I was ready to run straight home into a straightjacket.
"You look pale," my wife used to say. "Are you all right? You should get your iron levels checked. You might be anaemic."
Actually, I truly believe that the unsolicited noise affected my health in many ways. Not only was there the psychological attrition wrought by the radio itself, there was also the stress of trying to manage an unmanageable situation.
In sheer desperation, one way I tried to escape the incessant barrage of radio-sound was to seek halcyon moments of silence outside the office walls usually with cigarette poised between shaking middle- and fore- finger. Another tactic was to strap myself into a pair of G-force resistant headphones and try and drown out the sound of the radio by playing my own music at industrial volume. Unfortunately, persistent ringing in my ears and the impending threat of industrial deafness forced me to abandon this tactic.
I know I'm not alone in finding the omnipresence of unsolicited noise oppressive. I have a friend who is far more radical in his defiance of this societal ill than I am ever brave enough to be. Once, while out to dinner with him London in quiet and elegant French restaurant we ordered our first two courses and were about to begin eating when our ears were surprised by the sound of chic French lounge music.
Very politely, my friend asked the manager if it could be turned off. "No," replied the manager. "It is company policy. It is what the customers like."
"I am a customer," said my friend. "And I do not like it." At which point he simply upped and left, saying to me, "It is not that I am a hater of music quite the opposite. As you know, I love music. Why should we have to endure music we do not enjoy, that we cannot even hear properly, simply because some marketing people have decided that is what we, as customers, want?
"I value my senses. Just I like to receive a massage, but it does not necessarily follow that I would like to be massaged by a stranger as I eat my meal, so do I not wish to be played music I have not asked to hear."
I should add that my friend, who some disregard as a pompous and oddball anachronism and is admired by me for those very same reasons, is a musician.
And his high principles regarding music are not peculiar to him. Daniel Barenboim, one of the most important pianists and conductors of the past fifty years, when asked what was the greatest threat to music today, replied,"Hearing it too often in public places - lifts, hotel lobbies. It gets people used to hearing music without really listening to it. But you must concentrate on music to get the most out of it."
