You know the email. The one with the invoice that makes your eyes water. Soon after, a specialist arrives with an expensive-looking Class 1 Sound Level Meter (SLM), performs a ritual of measurements, and leaves you with a certificate declaring your audiometric room “quiet enough”.
Let’s be blunt: this annual ceremony is an expensive piece of theatre. You’ve been told it’s a non-negotiable part of your compliance with South Africa’s occupational health standards. But is it? Or are you paying a fortune to perpetuate a myth that benefits everyone but your practice and patients?
We’re here to tell you the game is up. For far too long, South Africa’s occupational health practitioners have been sold a service they are not only capable of performing themselves but can actually do in a way that is functionally superior and scientifically more robust. This isn’t just our opinion; it’s a fact supported by international best practice and exposed by the very South African National Standards (SANS) used to intimidate you.
Consider this your official permission slip to fire your certification specialist. It’s time to stop paying for a service you don’t need and take back control.
The Absurdity Is Now Written in Law
A quiet testing environment is non-negotiable for accurate audiometry. We all agree on that. The lie is the belief that its quietness must be validated by an external party with an SLM. The proof that this is a uniquely South African charade is now permanently enshrined in SANS 10083:2023.
A recently added clause, Note 1 of Section 15.1.2.3, has inadvertently exposed the entire racket. This note implies that a headset is unsuitable if its sound-blocking (attenuation) capability cannot be measured in the field by an end-user with a basic SLM.
As our “Scientific Critique” white paper exhaustively details, this requirement is scientifically bankrupt. Here’s why this is the fatal flaw that changes everything:
- It Demands the Impossible: A headset’s true attenuation is determined in a laboratory using highly specific, standardized methods. Expecting anyone – including your expensive specialist – to replicate this in the field with an SLM is, to put it diplomatically, “scientifically inappropriate.”
- It Invalidates Itself: The method is so flawed that it renders most forms of earphone-based audiometry technically non-compliant under its own ridiculous terms, including TDH-39 or supra-aural headsets. It deems the MPANLs tables for supra-aural headsets in the standard unnecessary.
- It Reveals the Farce: When an official standard includes a testing method that is scientifically nonsensical, it pulverizes the argument that you need a highly-paid “expert” to interpret the rules for you. The standard, in this regard, has become a point of ridicule, not a benchmark of good practice.
This flawed note, likely intended to gatekeep against innovation, has instead delegitimized the very process it was meant to protect. Why should you continue paying for a service whose guiding principles are so demonstrably confused?
The Superior Solution: The Psychoacoustic Check
The alternative isn’t a compromise; it’s an upgrade. It’s more convenient, cost-free, and functionally more relevant than any certificate an external specialist can sell you. It is called the Psychoacoustic Check, and it is your declaration of independence.
Grounded in the principles of ISO 8253-1 and SANS 10182, this method uses the most sensitive acoustic instrument available: the human ear (Better than an expensive Class 1 SLM). As detailed in our white paper, “The Psychoacoustic Check: A Preferred Method,” the process is simple and powerful:
- Use Your Patients: On any given day, use the validated audiograms of the first two routine patients whose hearing meets a specific, gold-standard set of thresholds.
- Meet the Gold Standard: For the room to be certified as functionally quiet, these two individuals must achieve a complete set of non-negotiable hearing thresholds in both ears. A single failure at any frequency means the test environment is not quiet enough. The criteria are:
- ≤0 dBHL at 2000 Hz, 3000 Hz, and 4000 Hz AND
- ≤15 dBHL at 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 6000 Hz, and 8000 Hz
- Self-Certify with Confidence: The two complete, signed audiograms are your direct, functional evidence. You, the competent practitioner, attach them to a certificate you created, sign it, and your room is certified. The process is complete.
This is not a “workaround.” It is a superior approach because it holistically validates the entire testing system in its real-world application. It answers the only question that truly matters: “Is this specific room, using this specific audiometer and headset, quiet enough to get an accurate result right now?”
An SLM measurement in an empty room cannot answer that. The Psychoacoustic Check can.
From Paying Client to Empowered Practitioner
By adopting the Psychoacoustic Check, you transform your role from a captured client into a confident, self-sufficient certifier. The benefits are immediate:
- Eliminate Certification Costs: Save thousands of Rands in pure profit, year after year.
- Achieve On-Demand Compliance: For mobile units, this is revolutionary. Perform a Psychoacoustic Check after each relocation, ensuring compliance before your first patient.
- Embrace True Quality Assurance: Move from a theatrical measurement to a direct, functional superior validation of your results.
This is the future of practical and uncompromised hearing conservation in South Africa. It is the future the GeoAxon Kuduwave is designed to lead. As a validated boothless audiometer, the GeoAxon Kuduwave provides the perfect foundation for the Psychoacoustic Check, giving you the freedom to conduct accurate, compliant testing anywhere, free from the constraints of the old guard. Thus allowing you to trust your results with dignity and integrity.
This does not only apply to the GeoAxon Kuduwave. It is for all mobile audiometers, mobile booths, for all fixed audiometers, any audiometer. You should not be paying for room certifications for occupational healthcare in South Africa, ever.
Your Mandate Is Clear
You are a highly-trained professional. You are more than capable of ensuring the integrity of your own testing environment using a method that is more scientifically sound than the one you’re being charged for.
The time for paying for this charade is over.
- Adopt the Psychoacoustic Check. Start using this scientifically superior and cost-free method for your room verifications immediately.
- Demand Scientific Justification. The next time you are told you need an external SLM certification, ask them to explain why their measurement is superior to a direct, functional, ISO-aligned psychoacoustic validation.
- Advocate for Clarity. Join the call for South African standards authorities to urgently remove or rewrite the flawed Note 1 from SANS 10083. The integrity of our professional standards depends on it.
You hold the power to end this lucrative myth. Science is on your side. International best practice is on your side.
Step into your authority. Stop paying for the certificate. Start certifying your own freedom.