• Corpus ID: 187783871

Hearing protector fit-testing and the new ANSI S12.71 standard

@inproceedings{Voix2018HearingPF,
  title={Hearing protector fit-testing and the new ANSI S12.71 standard},
  author={J{\'e}r{\'e}mie Voix},
  year={2018}
}

• J. Voix
• Published 2018
• Medicine

Individual hearing protection devices (HPD) are often the first line of defense against noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) in the workplace. Unfortunately, the real-world attenuation offered by HPDs greatly differs from the laboratory ratings, for many reasons that are now well understood. Mostly, these are related to the proper fit of a given HPD by an individual user. To better assess this fit and predict the effective individual attenuation, Field Attenuation Estimation Systems (FAES) have been developed over the years and are now being used more and more frequently in Hearing Loss Prevention Programs (HLPP). Nevertheless, all FAES do not rely on the same measurement paradigms, nor do they imply the same hardware and, as with any measurement system, the intrinsic measurement uncertainty will differ from one FAES to another. The new ANSI S12.71 standard, which took a few years to complete, addresses this issue by specifying how such measurement uncertainty should be calculated and what the associated experimental validations are. This paper summarizes the main concepts developed within the ANSI S12.71 standard and will discuss the future of FAES and fit testing in an effort to stop the ongoing epidemic of NIHL.