EN 352 is a group of European Standards, agreed upon by the European CEN/TC159 Hearing Protection Technical Committee which govern all hearing protection manufacturing standards in Europe (and the UK). All products which achieve EN 352 Certification have been tested and are approved to meet these rigorous standards.
PPE regulations define the protection or workers from harmful noise as the highest risk category there is ( category III ) and, hence the EN352 regulations are subject to audit on an annual basis.
The latest approved revision of the regulations was the EN 352:2020 - whilst it is highly likely that no further action is required on the user's part - it is a good idea to check that you are using hearing protection equipment that is approved for the use which it is employed.
3M explain: Why is EN 352 it being updated?
As discussed above, all European Harmonised Standards are subject to a mandatory five-year periodic review whereby they are either reconfirmed for a further five years or undergo revision. In the case of the EN 352 family of standards, the decision taken by the European Technical Committee CEN/TC159 was to revise all relevant parts of this family of standards. One of the key changes of the updated standards was to encourage manufacturers to commercialise products that are better suited for workers exposed to low/moderate noise levels without resulting in isolation or over-protection.This is a key reason why the conformity assessment has been changed from meeting minimum octave band test frequencies ranging from 125 Hz to 8000 Hz. The new conformity assessment is based on meeting the minimum value of High (12), Medium (11) and Low (9) frequencies, based on mean minus 1 standard deviation. In addition to the new conformity assessment, the SNR data is also reported based on mean minus 1 standard deviation.
CONFUSED ?
3M will be running a free educational webinar to explain the development of hearing protection standards, why they are revised, the new standards, the process of attenuation testing, test result reporting and offering resources for you. This will take place on Wednesday March 8 2023 from 11:00am - 12:00pm (GMT).
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