Cite as: 506 U. S. 153 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
1561 (CA11 1991). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 503 U. S. 935 (1992). We now affirm.
III
Petitioners do not dispute the Director's or the lower court's characterization of occupational hearing loss, and we find no basis for doing so ourselves. Once we accept that characterization, it follows that the retiree provisions enacted in 1984—the so-called "third" compensation system— do not apply to claims for occupational hearing loss. Occupational hearing loss, unlike a long-latency disease such as asbestosis, is not an occupational disease that does not "immediately result in . . . disability." 33 U. S. C. § 910(i). Whereas a worker who has been exposed to harmful levels of asbestos suffers no injury until the disease manifests itself years later, a worker who is exposed to excessive noise suffers the injury of loss of hearing, which, as a scheduled injury, is presumptively disabling, simultaneously with that exposure. Because occupational hearing loss does result in immediate disability, the plain language of § 10(i) leads to the conclusion that a retiree's claim for occupational hearing loss does not fall within the class of claims covered by the third compensation system.
The Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits recognized the crucial distinction between occupational hearing loss and latent diseases such as asbestosis, but nonetheless concluded that Congress, in enacting the third compensation system, did not intend to distinguish between the different types of occupational diseases suffered by retirees. In particular, these courts were concerned that if a retiree's claim for occupational hearing loss was not deemed to be a claim with respect to "an occupational disease which does not immediately result in . . . disability," then the Act would be silent as to the appropriate "time of injury" for such a claim. That is, if the "time of injury" for a retiree's claim of occupational hearing loss is not "the date on which the em-
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