Use Of Earmuffs Research Articles

Enclosures and screens for saw operators

In the major timber producing countries the problems associated with high noise levels produced by conversion machinery are recognized. Saw bench operators in Australian industry do not favour the use of ear muffs or ear plugs, and acoustic screening is not widely used. Aspects of the design of operator enclosures and the performance of some existing protective screens are discussed in this paper. The effects of noise on worker performance are also under study but are not covered in the paper.

Speech intelligibility and the use of hearing protectors.

On theoretical grounds, it is usually assumed that the use of hearing protectors in a noisy working environment has no influence upon speech intelligibility - in fact, may even increase it. In practice, however, people often do not wear hearing protectors, since these are widely believed to reduce speech intelligibility. In the present article, a description is given of an investigation, carried out among 537 subjects, into the influence of hearing protectors upon the speech intelligibility of people suffering from noise-induced hearing loss. From this analysis, it has become clear that the use of ear-muffs only leads to an improvement in speech intelligibility in persons who, according to their pure-tone audiogram, suffer from relatively small hearing losses. In general, it may be said that an increase in the severity of hearing losses will result in a reduced speech intelligibility.