While ideally noise should be reduced at the source, in the military environment the most effective solution in terms of both cost and operational effectiveness has been to provide personnel with personal hearing protection. This protection may be in the form of either an earplug that occludes the ear canal or a circumaural protector that inserts a barrier between the ambient noise and the ear....

The Sound Practice Project is a 5-year study involving baseline evaluation, development, and implementation of musician-specific work health and safety initiatives. A cross-sectional population physical and psychological survey and physical assessment were conducted at the same time, with an auditory health assessment conducted later. The results were used to guide the development of a series o...

OBJECTIVES The effectiveness of hearing protection devices (HPDs), when used in workplace conditions, has been shown over the years to be usually lower than the labeled values obtained under well-controlled laboratory conditions. Causes for such discrepancies have been listed and discussed by many authors. This study is an attempt to understand the issues in greater details and quantify some of...

The attenuation provided by hearing protection devices (HPDs) is traditionally determined under laboratory conditions by means of a standardised method titled REAT (Real Ear Attenuation at Threshold). This performance is often overestimated compared to what has been measured so far in industrial reality. Concerning the earmuff, the formable earplug and preformed earplug type of HPD, there are n...

If the attenuation that can be provided by a single hearing protection device (HPD) is inadequate for a given noise exposure and if noise control procedures are impracticable, the only remaining alternative is to use dual protectors, i.e. an earplug plus an earmuff. Such a combination can provide additional protection but it has long been recognized that the resultant noise reduction falls shor...