Reactions offered here (a) urge rethinking on the adequacy of a widely used criterion for defining hearing handicap in view of data referenced in the subject report, (b) criticize the author's evaluations basic to estimating hearing loss risk from known levels of noise exposure and recommending safe limits for hearing, and (c) question the use of proposed complex schemes for rating noise hazards to hearing as derived from presumed relationships between temporary and permanent noise‐induced threshold shifts in hearing.