telstra/australia


Call centre workers cop an ear-bashing

(from: www.smh.com.au/news/0105/25/national/national14.html; 26.05.01)

A consultant for Telstra has documented 103 cases of "acoustic shock" among the company's call centre workers, boosting the credibility of sufferers of the debilitating syndrome and bolstering compensation claims.

Audiologist Dr Jan Milhinch, who conducted her research using Telstra's employee records, said they showed acoustic shock was "not an imaginary or a malingering issue. It is more a psychological shock response to a sudden loud sound" heard through a phone line. Sufferers report symptoms including extreme pain, tinnitus, vertigo and hypersensitivity to loud sounds heard subsequently. They may also experience numb, tingling or burning sensations around the ear, but not hearing loss - distinguishing acoustic shock from industrial deafness.

Rarely, surgery may be needed to repair ruptured inner ear membranes, and people may be unable to work and become depressed.

Dr Milhinch said call centre workers were thought to be at increased risk because of the time they spent on the phone and because the high stress of the job made them more susceptible to acoustic injury.

A Telstra spokeswoman confirmed the cases, which she said had occurred since 1994. She would not comment on whether the company had experienced additional acoustic shock complaints, nor on whether sufferers had sought or been awarded compensation.

But Dr Milhinch said she understood at least some of them had received payments.

Telstra employs 11,000 call centre workers, and the spokeswoman said their training included briefing on acoustic shock. As well, Telstra was testing a new headset to shield users from noise.

The call centre industry is estimated to employ about 2 per cent of the national workforce - 160,000 people - and to be growing at about 25 per cent a year.

Some call centres had particularly high rates of acoustic shock, suggesting "management styles and stress levels" of individual environments may be partly responsible.

The noises that trigger the condition usually occur within the phone network, sometimes as a result of defective equipment that creates high-pitched feedback. But there had been cases of irate consumers, angry at waiting on hold, blowing whistles directly into the telephone, Dr Milhinch said.

The maximum noise level that Telstra's network can transmit - 117 decibels - was about 10 times as loud as speech. "The body does go into a fight or flight response," Dr Milhinch said. The threshold at which this might happen varied, and appeared to be lower among smokers and people with previous stress.

British Telecom has paid £90,000 ($248,000) to a worker with acoustic shock.

A spokeswoman for Comcare, the Commonwealth's workers' compensation insurer, said the organisation was "aware of [acoustic shock] as an emerging occupational health and safety issue". But data was not available on claims numbers.

Mr Colin Lynch of the Australian Services Union estimated there might be 5,000 sufferers.

But the vice-president of the Australian Society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Dr Robert Payten, said he was sceptical about the condition.


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