Development of a New Standard Laboratory Protocol for Estimation of the Field Attenuation of Hearing Protection Devices: Sample Size Necessary to Provide Acceptable Reproducibility

Details

• Personal Author:
  Behar A ; Berger EH ; Casali JG ; Dixon-Ernst C ; Franks, John R. ; Krieg EF ; Mozo BT ; Murphy, William J. ; Royster JD ; Royster LH ; Simon SD ; Stephenson C
• Description:
  The mandate of ASA Working Group S12/WG 11 has been to develop "laboratory and/or field procedure(s) that yield useful estimates of field performance" of hearing protection devices (HPDs). A real-ear attenuation at threshold procedure was selected, devised, tested for one earmuff and three earplugs via an interlaboratory study involving five laboratories and 147 subjects, and incorporated into a new standard that was approved in 1997 [Royster et al., "Development of a new standard laboratory protocol for estimating the field attenuation of hearing protection devices. Part I. Research of Working Group 11, Accredited Standards Committee S12, Noise," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 1506-1526; ANSI, SI2.6-1997, "American National Standard method for measuring real-ear attenuation of hearing protectors" (American National Standards Institute, New York, 1997)]. The subject-fit methodology of ANSI SI2.6-1997 relies upon listeners who are audiometrically proficient, but inexperienced in the use of HPDs. Whenever a new method is adopted, it is important to know the effects of variability on the power of the measurements. In evaluation of protector noise reduction determined by experimenter-fit, informed-user-fit, and subject-fit methods, interlaboratory reproducibility was found to be best for the subject-fit method. Formulas were derived for determining the minimum detectable difference between attenuation measurements and for determining the number of subjects necessary to achieve a selected level of precision. For a precision of 6 dB, the study found that the minimum number of subjects was 4 for the Bilsom UF-I earmuff, 10 for the E-A-R Classic earplug, 31 for the Willson EPI00 earplug, and 22 for the PlasMed V-51R earplug. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Ear Hearing Laboratories Noise Noise, Occupational Occupational Health Personal Protective Equipment Protective Clothing Safety Sense Organs
• Keywords:
  Auditory-feedback Ear-protection Ear-protectors Equipment-design Equipment-reliability Hearing-level Hearing-protection Hearing-tests Hearing-threshold Humans Laboratory-testing Noise-control Noise-levels Noise-measurement Noise-protection Standards Testing-equipment

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• ISSN:
  0001-4966
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Alabama ; Indiana ; Missouri ; North Carolina ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 4 ; OSHA Region 5 ; OSHA Region 7 ; Pennsylvania ; Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DART - Division of Applied Research and Technology ; EID - Education and Information Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  311-323
• Volume:
  115
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20024199
• Citation:
  J Acoust Soc Am 2004 Jan; 115(1):311-323
• Contact Point Address:
  William J. Murphy, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Hearing Loss Prevention Section, MS C-27, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45226
• Email:
  wmurphy@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2004
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:48b4cb6ef9e17dbf619baad91df31424b857fbc9e077dc24c3f462d419995762ef073c3ddd237e4a1abace8eeb457a3ea1ddcaa7572da8d09e0060fdbf9eace4
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/196135/cdc_196135_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 777.66 KB ]