Jg. Casali et Eh. Berger, TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS IN HEARING PROTECTION CIRCA-1995 - ACTIVE NOISE-REDUCTION, FREQUENCY AMPLITUDE-SENSITIVITY, AND UNIFORM ATTENUATION/, American Industrial Hygiene Association journal, 57(2), 1996, pp. 175-185
Conventional hearing protection devices represent a mature technology
that has been widely used since the late 1950s. When worn consistently
and correctly such devices can provide suitable hearing protection in
many, if not most noise-hazardous or aurally annoying situations. How
ever, such devices have often been implicated in compromised auditory
perception, degraded signal detection, and reduced speech communicatio
n abilities. in some instances this can create hazards for the wearer,
or at the very least, resistance to use by those in need of hearing p
rotection. Recent technological developments have been used to augment
hearing protectors in an attempt to alleviate these problems for the
user while providing adequate attenuation. Operational characteristics
, design alternatives, performance data, and applications for active n
oise reduction, active sound transmission, frequency selectivity, adju
stable attenuation, amplitude sensitivity, and uniform attenuation fea
tures in hearing protectors are discussed, and recommendations are pro
vided.