Summary Report on the Sixth International Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem

Although many of the papers at this congress were reiterations of previous work, or at least variations on the same theme, there were a number of new and exciting findings. Examples of these were the papers on the role of cochlear efferents in noise-induced hearing loss by the French researchers Pujol and Puel, the work of Al-Masri and his colleagues on underwater hearing thresholds, the work of Edworthy on warning signals, the sleep study by Ollerhead, and the Munich Airport study by Hygge et al. One cannot help but notice that the majority of the presentations, especially the most innovative and important ones, were given by non-U.S. researchers. This is also true of the activities in the international standards arena. It is quite clear that the United States has taken a back seat in noise effects research and regulation. Greater involvement and support by ASHA would be useful, but without federal government interest and support, the situation is unlikely to change.