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TOPICAL AREAS
Irish News interviews Dorcas Crawford regarding the Firm's Noise Induced Hearing Loss Cases
Slow realisation of a serious problem By Bimpe Archer 30/10/09 MANY of the officers who arrive at Dorcas Crawford's office don't think they have a hearing-loss problem. "A lot of the time they will say 'There's nothing wrong with my hearing - my wife sent me'. Their wives or children have finally had enough of having the television turned up so loud and have sent them to get their hearing fixed," she said. The solicitor's firm Edwards and Co is retained by the Police Federation, from which it receives referrals of former officers suffering impaired hearing. In the past four years it has taken on around 2,500 cases, each of which is fought on an individual basis. Ms Crawford estimates that there may be around 4,000 successful cases by the time the litigation is complete. "It is not like the PTS cases which were group actions," she said, referring to post-traumatic stress. "Every individual has a different level of effect from this. It is not like it was one set of circumstances where they all trained in 1973 in a certain place at a certain time. "That can't happen in these cases. People have different levels of training and of problems." Ms Crawford said the first cases came "in dribs and drabs". A dramatic rise was partly explained by word of mouth. However, a major factor was the fact that sufferers were reaching an age when their problems were becoming apparent. "The people who were trained in the early days, the seventies and eighties, we are only seeing the effects now," Ms Crawford said. "A similar thing happened in the shipyard. The extent of the problem only becomes clear in later life, when they reach their late forties and early fifties. "Hearing loss can be very isolating, especially with grandchildren, because you find children can tend to just ignore you if you can't hear them." Ms Crawford said that although there are a huge amount of cases, they are straightforward. "The lowest figures awarded have been around £2,000 and the highest in the early and mid £20,000s," she said. "It totally depends on how they have been injured. "First we would get their GP notes and records and they are examined by an ear, nose and throat doctor who can immediately measure it and have a way of knowing whether it is age-related or noise induced." Ms Crawford said a case only proceeds if a doctor says the hearing loss has been caused by exposure to high levels of noise. "They are straightforward cases, not like back injury where it could be said to be due to wear and tear or to whatever accident," she said. "It was well known at the time that firearms and firearms training and any of that kind of noise caused hearing loss." |
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