The popularity of open-plan offices has been on the rise recently and expanded to all sectors of working life. While moving to open-plan offices brings savings to companies, open-plan offices have been connected with various different negative consequences, such as noise. Noise has been found to be a central cause of dissatisfaction towards working in an open-plan office and lead to subsequent ...

Earplugs are a common form of protection for workers exposed to hazardous noise levels. Their comfort directly impacts the effective by influencing their consistent and correct use. Nevertheless, definition may vary according studies. Thus, previous review literature has shown that improve our understanding perceived reduce measurement variability, it is advisable consider through multidimensio...

In alpine regions, cows are often equipped with bells during pasture season to ensure that farmers can locate them. Constant exposure to the chime of a bell may affect cows' acoustic perception in general. The aim of this study is to test whether routine bell exposure affects the reactivity to a noise stimulus and might be associated with hearing impairment in cows. For the assessment, behavior...

A 52-year-old male was evaluated by the authors after initially reporting fullness in his left ear while traveling on an airplane. A unique feature of the patient's complaint was the development of severe bilateral hyperacusis (loudness discomfort levels of between 20-34 dB HL) in spite of the fact that the hearing loss was initially reported in the left ear. To achieve loudness comfort, the pa...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of individual training of workers, using an instrument to quantitatively evaluate the noise attenuation gained with the use of earplugs, on the efforts to promote the use of hearing protection devices. The subjects were 68 male workers exposed to noise of above 80 dBA at an electronic parts manufacturer in Japan. They received group instructio...

INTRODUCTION Environmental stimulus, especially noise and light, is thought to disrupt sleep in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). This study aimed to determine the physiological and psychological effects of ICU noise and light, and of earplugs and eye masks, used in these conditions in healthy subjects. METHODS Fourteen subjects underwent polysomnography under four conditions: adapta...

In the November issue of Critical Care, Demoule et al. [1] describe a randomized controlled trial (RCT) undertaken in unsedated patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), assessing the addition of earplugs and eye masks to routine care alone, on polysomnographic measures of sleep quality. The study provides novel mechanistic data supporting the efficacy of earplugs to improve sleep in ...

The compressive creep and recovery of foam earplugs was studied at various applied stresses leading to different fi nal creep strains. Deformation was determined from digital videos of the earplugs via image processing software. Creep could not be modeled by a single exponential in time; creep approximated a power law in time. Nonlinear viscoelasticity was observed: creep compliance depends on ...

The use of earplugs in loud music venues is confined to a small minority who wish to avoid hearing damage from excessive noise exposure. Using the framework of the health belief model (HBM), structured interviews were held with 20 earplug-wearing clubbers. Qualitative analysis revealed the HBM constructs relevant to understanding this group's motivation to protect their hearing. Personal experi...