Legislation A View of the Hill. David M. Sykes

A View of THE HILL Let’s watch what 2021’s blue, red, and purple changes on Capitol Hill will bring to hearing health. By David M. Sykes

It’s worth noting that the 2018 Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act approved several new, potentially noise-causing transportation systems: drone deliveries, air taxis, and “vertiports”— vertical-takeoff airports for these drones and taxis to use.

Share your story: Have you taken a stand against noise? Tell us at editor@hhf.org. The history of hearing health legislation has been one of flip-flops. In 1981 a White House executive order abruptly ended funding for research, shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific and regulatory work on noise control, and halted momentum that had been building since 1968, when U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart first called for action on noise pollution. But the ground shifted again a decade ago, when interest in hearing health began to climb again, due to a convergence of research breakthroughs, technological innovation, crowdsourced funding, and regulatory changes.

This forward motion led to two federal reports—from the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology in 2015, and from the National Academy of Medicine in 2016—which led to the passage of the WarrenGrassley Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act in 2017. It created a new Food and Drug Administration category of hearing devices available without prescription. Also, the McBath-Dingell Medicare Hearing Aid Act passed Congress in 2019 and is also meant to ease the cost of treating hearing loss.

Yet the actual implementation of these two pieces of legislation continues to languish. With the 117th Congress starting Jan. 3, 2021, let’s keep our eyes on two congressional groups focused on hearing health.

First, watch the chairs and members of the Congressional Hearing Health Caucus and the private-sector and nonprofit organizations that support them, including Hearing Health Foundation. With bipartisan cochairs, this caucus is well-positioned to get stuff done. The Republican is an engineer, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV)—and he wears a cochlear implant. His cochair is Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA). As a representative of parts of Silicon Valley, Thompson will be aware of the technologies driving change in assistive devices.

Second, let’s watch the chairs and 50 members of the Congressional Quiet Skies Caucus and their regional support groups, called the National Quiet Skies Coalition. The four caucus chairs are Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), and Mike Quigley (D-IL).

In February 2020, the coalition expressed disappointment about the Federal Aviation Administration’s lack of initiative in mitigating airplane noise, as part of the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act. This act also approved other potentially noise-causing transportation systems: drone deliveries, air taxis, and “vertiports”—vertical-takeoff airports for these drones and taxis to use.

Many, many other federal agencies have a hand in controlling noise pollution and promoting hearing protection, and we will continue to monitor progress. We are hopeful that this past decade’s increased awareness of the harmful effects of noise not just to hearing but to overall health will continue to

push forward hearing-friendly legislation. David M. Sykes leads several professional organizations in acoustical science, including the Quiet Healthcare Council and the Quiet Coalition, both programs operated by Quiet Communities Inc., and the Facility Guidelines Institute Acoustic Advisory Committee, which he wrote about in the Fall 2020 issue of Hearing Health, at hhf.org/magazine. For references, see hhf.org/winter2021-references.