Abstract
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), accredited S12 standards committee for noise, working group 11 is developing a standard to characterize the performance of hearing protector fit test systems. An inter-laboratory study was conducted to compare sound field measurements of real-ear attenuation at threshold (REAT) tests of hearing protection with three hearing protection fit-test systems. The draft ANSI standard for personal attenuation ratings from fit-test systems includes adjustments to the fit test system personal attenuation rating for the accuracy and precision of the measurement. As well, adjustments are proposed for the effect of fitting and for spectral variability of effective attenuation. In the inter-laboratory study, two fit-test systems exhibited precision of about 2 dB while the third system had a precision of about 4 dB. The third system underestimated the sound field attenuation by about 2 dB. Because the inter-laboratory study tested two fittings of the hearing protector with each fit-test system, the variability of individual fitting is described as an average of the differences of first and second tests. This paper will also evaluate the effect of the noise spectrum for the three fit-test systems.
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