A farm worker who worked for twenty years in pigsties is now hearing impaired. He accuses the cry of the pigs of being the cause of his hearing loss and asks that his disability be officially recognized.
Everything is good about the pig, except maybe the noise. This is certainly what Serge Personeni must say to himself, this inhabitant of Saint-Laurent-en-Grandvaux in the Jura. The man accuses his former employer, a large pigsty company based in Haute-Savoie, of being the source of his deafness and balance problems. Now 59 years old, he asks that his disability be officially recognized and especially that the cause be determined.
The story may give rise to a smile, yet Serge’s fight is very serious. Because for him, the origin of his deafness is beyond doubt: “I worked for twenty years in pigsties in Doubs and Jura. Farms that numbered 1,500 to 2,000 pigs, so it was always very loud cries. And me, I spent hours and hours in there without any protection. Normally, I should have stayed a quarter of an hour exposed to such sound power. But it was a minimum of eight hours, rather ten, and without a helmet that would have allowed me to protect ”, he confides in the columns of the Parisian.
Solidarity with her husband from the onset of the first symptoms of deafness, the wife has been accumulating for several years the elements to prove the link between her husband’s work and his disability. Among the events against the employer that they hope to see condemned, an event of 2008 which marked the couple. During this year, Serge suffered a real burn-out and had to stop his activity as a farm worker. A complaint against the company will follow.
And the man has arguments to convince justice. Several readings carried out in pigsties should soon show that the decibels produced by thousands of pigs are incompatible with working without protection. In addition, deafness is already recognized as an occupational disease according to the medical, professional and administrative criteria stipulated in the table 42 occupational diseases of general scheme and the table 46 of the agricultural regime. And in this last table appears the activity of slaughter of pigs. The last word will go to the Jura Social Security Court, which will deal with the case on May 15.
Hearing is considered to be at risk from a level of 80 decibels, during an 8-hour working day. If the noise level is higher, the exposure should be shorter. If the level is extremely high (over 130 dB), any exposure, even for a very short time, is dangerous. Above 80 dB, noise can cause buzzing, ringing in the ears and temporary hearing loss. However, this auditory fatigue is reversible and can disappear in a few days or weeks, provided that you are not exposed to noise again during this period. From 140 dB, a sudden very intense noise can cause sudden deafness, total or partial, reversible or not. The risk was therefore very real for this Jura since the distress cry of a pig is evaluated at 115 dB, just below the noise of a plane taking off evaluated at 130 dB.
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