DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF GAS MASKS

The fitment trials carried out with butyl gas masks of the British ori gin aimed at finding out suitable sizes to almost the entire populatio n of the service personnel, with more than one thousand subjects drawn from different ethnic groups and regions in India have been reported. The percentages of perfect fitment of the four sizes viz., large, med ium, small and extra small have been found to be 6.68, 61.95, 30.62 an d 0.75 respectively for sizes of the subjects' faces. The data as well as other anthropometric measurements reported would be useful in the indigenous development of the face pieces. Details of the design of a medium size gas mask developed already are included.