Noise is aggravating, whether at home, in a restaurant or on a loud street. But in the workplace, excessive noise is more than aggravating: It cuts productivity while creating serious health hazards for workers, which might lead to costly fines and workers’ compensation claims.

A small group of Westinghouse retirees in London, Ontario, share a pizza with occupational hygienists, trying to reconstruct, both verbally and in a drawing, their old workplace. The hygienists hope to determine whether health problems reported by other Westinghouse retirees might be due to long term exposure to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) at the old plant.