Open AccessWhat do we know about hearing protector comfort?
Author(s) -
Roger T. Davis
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
noise and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1998-4030
pISSN - 1463-1741
DOI - 10.4103/1463-1741.44346
Subject(s) - clothing , work (physics) , audiology , computer science , engineering , medicine , mechanical engineering , archaeology , history
The purpose of the present article is to review comfort studies on hearing protector devices. Comfort is probably the most important dimension for long-term worker acceptance and effective wear of hearing protectors in noise. A short digression has been made to introduce comfort work from the textile and clothing industries where models of comfort have been attempted and comfort research is much more sophisticated. Finally, presented are some recent efforts by NIOSH to examine issues of hearing protector comfort in greater detail. These efforts include a field study of a semi-custom earplug hearing protector.