"My hearing is going."

Ask for the audiograms

Where your employer ran a hearing conservation program, there is a baseline audiogram and annual audiograms in your file showing exactly when your hearing shifted.

Request them in writing. Employers must retain exposure records for 30 years — a worker who left in 2011 can still ask.

And where no program was run at all, that absence is itself significant.

Understand the rating before it disappoints you

The AMA method averages four frequencies — 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 Hz — subtracts a 25-decibel low fence, multiplies the remainder by 1.5%, then weights your better ear five times more heavily than your worse one.

And the classic noise notch at 4,000–6,000 Hz — the diagnostic signature of occupational hearing loss — is not one of the four rated frequencies. Strong evidence of causation. Contributes nothing to the number.

Tinnitus may add up to 5% — but only where it accompanies measurable hearing loss and interferes with activities of daily living. Both conditions have to be documented. The full explanation.

"It's just your age"

Age-related and noise-induced hearing loss look different on an audiogram. Presbycusis is characteristically a sloping high-frequency loss without a notch. Noise-induced loss characteristically produces a notch at 4,000–6,000 Hz with recovery at 8,000 Hz.

That distinction is visible on the test, and it is where these cases are decided.

And it is probably not too late

Under § 5412 the date of injury is when you first suffered disability and knew it was work-related — not when the noise exposure happened.

"I stopped working in noise ten years ago" is usually not a reason the claim is late. More.

And § 5500.5 generally limits liability to the last year of injurious exposure, which determines which employer and carrier are on the claim — relevant across a long career.

Where this comes from