Ann. occup. Hyg., Vol. 46, No. 6, pp. 531-536, 2002
© 2002 British Occupational Hygiene Society
Published by Oxford University Press
Hearing Protectors Acceptability in Noisy Environments
Human Engineering Group, Department of Production and Systems, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimaraes, Portugal
Received 29 October 2001; in final form 22 April 2002
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ABSTRACT |
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 TOP ABSTRACT INTRODUCTIONMATERIALS AND METHODSRESULTSDISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONSREFERENCES |
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Objectives: Although hearing protectors must be used as a temporary solution, their choice should take into account several aspects, such as ergonomic features, associated with this device. The present study aims to analyse the relationship between the acoustical attenuation efficiency and other aspects related to the comfort afforded by hearing protectors and, consequently, their acceptability when used in industrial noisy environments. Methods: An evaluation of comfort was performed using a questionnaire, completed by 20 workers. Several scales related to the subjective feeling of comfort were used to quantify the comfort index of a given protector. Simultaneously, the time of usage of each protector was self-recorded by each subject. To test the relationship between the comfort index and the time during which protectors were used, a two-way analysis of variance (two-way ANOVA) was applied. Results and conclusions: The results obtained seem to demonstrate that there are significant differences between catalogued and effective attenuation. Protectors with less catalogued attenuation, but with higher acceptability, i.e. which were more comfortable, tended to be more efficient than protectors with a higher catalogued attenuation, but which were less comfortable. Finally, it must be emphasized that high efficiency can only be achieved through the attainment of an adequate balance between the range of parameters likely to determine its usage.
Keywords: acceptability of hearing protection; attenuation; comfort of hearing protection; hearing protection; noise
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INTRODUCTION |
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European Directive no. 86/188/CEE (European Commission, 1986), concerning worker’s protection against occupational noise, emphasizes that priority should be given to intervention actions focusing either on reducing noise levels as close as possible to their source or on noise propagation fields.
Despite the importance and efficiency assigned to the former intervention measures, individual hearing protection is frequently the only possible measure to implement, despite being regarded as a last resource as far as protection against exposure to noise is concerned (Lusk et al., 1995; Miguel, 1996). Although hearing protection devices (HPD) should be a temporary solution in a hearing conservation programme, their choice must be carefully thought out and not based on superficial considerations.
In occupational environments, the use of HPD, as a safety practice, is frequently compromised due to observed differences between real and catalogued attenuation (Casali et al., 1995) and to very low rates of HPD utilization.
These low rates are essentially due to the abstract nature of the noise-induced hearing loss concept, with no immediately observable effects, thus resulting in a non-palpable ‘reward’ for safety hearing practice (Berger, 2001). Wearing hearing protection is annoying in itself, or otherwise problematical.
In the literature it is possible to find several references to research on HPD use and motivation. In these references, researchers have developed various models to describe the motivational problem. For example, the behavioural–diagnostic model (DeJoy, 1986), which emphasizes predisposing factors, enabling factors (that can promote or block safe behaviour) and reinforcing factors, and the health promotion model (Lusk et al., 1994, 1999; Rabinowitz and Duran, 2001), which looks at modifying factors (behavioural characteristics) and cognitive–perceptual factors (such as perceived benefits and perceived self-efficacy).
From these models, it is possible to verify that workers need to be aware that they are susceptible to noise-induced hearing loss and that they can do something to avoid it. Additionally, there are some barriers to compliance, such as uncomfortable HPD, which must be removed.
The chosen HPD should be adapted both to the user and work environment (Berger, 1980a). However, protecting the worker against noise is not exclusively determined by the acoustical attenuation characteristics of the device (Arezes and Miguel, 1999). Other equally important ergonomic features associated with this kind of protective device must be taken into account. Illustrative examples of the former include comfort, need for verbal communication or auditory signal detection, compatibility with other safety equipment, durability and maintenance, to name a few (Berger, 1980b). It is critical not only that HPD provide adequate noise attenuation, but also that the devices are comfortable and acceptable to the workers.
Although comfort is known to be an important influencing factor in HPD use, comfort assessment is a complex task. By its nature, comfort is a subjective assessment that is affected by many factors other than those that can be objectively measured, such as band force or pressure (Damongeot et al., 1982). For example, comfort may vary as a function of the acoustical environment or be differentiated by non-acoustic factors, such as the aesthetics of the designs being compared.
As reported in Arezes and Miguel (1999), workers and people in general usually show poor perception of the implications of the period of use in the final efficiency of HPD. In order to ensure that a high efficiency of attenuation is achieved, it is important that workers understand that they must wear HPD continuously and throughout the entire exposure time. To accomplish this it is of primary importance that comfortable devices are available and that there is a focus on worker training regarding HPD use (Mayer and Korhonen, 1999).
As an example of the influence of the time of use, we can imagine a worker who only wears his HPD for 90% of his 8 h shift, and consequently it is not worn for 48 minutes. In this case, the attenuation afforded by the HPD, with a nominal attenuation of 30 dB, is less than 10 dB.
This calculation can be done using equation (1):
R = 10 x log{100/[100 – p(1 – 10–N/10)]}
where R represents the ‘real attenuation’ of a hearing protector with nominal attenuation N used for time p (%) of the total shift.
The present paper focuses on evaluating the comfort of some HPD in an industrial environment and on comparing real efficiency against the predicted one.
The study reported here was developed at the Ergonomics and Safety Laboratory of the University of Minho. Data were gathered during field studies carried out in two industrial companies, one from the chemical industry and the other from the food processing field.
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MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Sample selection and description
As mentioned previously, for this study workers were selected from two companies. Twenty workers were selected from four different workplaces, two from each company. Subjects were then divided into four different groups, each one composed of five subjects within the same workplace. The selected workers had noise exposures higher than the Portuguese threshold value for daily occupational noise exposure [LEP,d > 90 dB(A)].
Noise levels evaluation, along with octave band analysis, was determined throughout all different workplaces in both companies using an integrating sound level meter (Bruel and Kjaer model 2260) and noise dosimeters (Bruel and Kjaer model 4436).
Other data relating to the sample, namely age, gender, grade and time of exposure, were obtained from the company managements, with the workers’ agreement.
Of the 20 workers that constituted the study sample, 65% were female, none of them had abnormal hearing loss and all were normally HPD users, although not with the tested devices. Of the sample, 30% of the subjects had an educational level less than Grade 5, 30% between Grades 5 and 9 and the other 40% between Grades 9 and 12. Further statistical data about the study sample are presented in Table 1.
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Each group of workers used each HPD type for one week in rotation. For example, group 1 used HPD type 1 in week 1, changed to type 2 in week 2, and so on; group 2 used type 2 in week 1, then type 3 in week 2, etc.
Comfort evaluation and period of HPD use
A comfort evaluation was performed using a questionnaire, which was administered after each HPD utilization. Four HPD (two earplugs and two earmuffs) were evaluated and used during this study. Catalogued attenuation data for the tested devices, represented by the single number rating (SNR), are presented in Table 2.
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To evaluate the comfort of the two types of HPD tested (earplugs and earmuffs) the previously mentioned questionnaire was applied. This was aimed at collecting the worker’s opinion regarding the HPD’s comfort. A grid, composed of 16 series of bipolar scales (see Table 3), was used to assess and quantify the wearer’s subjective feelings of comfort into a single rating, namely the comfort index (CI), described in Results. A similar grid, from which the study grid was translated, was previously validated and used by Park and Casali (1991).
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Subject responses to bipolar comfort scales were coded, i.e. converted to a numerical value, ranging from 1 to 7. For each scale the response most closely related to the right adjective was coded 7 and the most closely related to the left adjective was coded 1.
The second scale (comfortable–uncomfortable) clearly best represented the user’s overall impression of that HPD type: we refer to this as the central scale. The other scales were used to elucidate particular aspects of comfort. These other scales were not given any preferential orientation (left–right or right–left) with respect to the central scale, so the property likely to lead to greater comfort (e.g. ‘not cumbersome’ or ‘light’) might be at either the left or right end. This was to avoid a ‘halo’ effect (Aiken, 1986) and to encourage independent use of each scale, as verified by Arezes and Miguel (2001). These different orientations lead to a reverse coding, in other words, those scales with a different orientation to the central scale (second in the grid) were reversed. For example, if the worker marked the first scale in the left space, considering the HPD as painless, the initial score was 1, but as this scale has a different orientation, the value should be reversed to become 7, because this is the most ‘comfortable’ option in this scale of ‘pain’.
In order to evaluate the four types of HPD each worker was asked to use each of the devices for a week, while recording the mean time of actual HPD use on a daily basis. We treated this self-reported hearing protection use as a reliable measure, as concluded in previous studies by Lusk et al. (1998) and Seixas et al. (2001).
At the end of each week the worker was asked to fill in a questionnaire in which he/she expressed his/her opinion with regard to the use of a specific HPD.
Data were analysed using both SPSS (SPSS Inc., 1999) and SigmaStat (Jandel Corp., 1995).
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RESULTS |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMATERIALS AND METHODSRESULTSDISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONSREFERENCES |
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Comfort index (CI) composition
To compose the CI only some dimensions of the entire scale grid were used. Because ‘comfort’ (second scale in the grid; Table 3) was, as stated previously, the hypothetical construct of major interest, any scale achieving a high correlation with ‘comfortable–uncomfortable’ is likely to influence the subject’s perception of global HPD comfort, and hence should be included in CI computation.
The CI was then calculated using a cut-off criterion for scales that did not show a statistically significant correlation (
rs > 0.45 and P < 0.05) with the central scale (Park and Casali, 1991). Application of the cut-off criteria mentioned led to the selection of 11 out of the initial 16 scales (Table 3) for subsequent computation of CI for each HPD. The computed CI (for each subject and each HPD), obtained by summing each scale code, resulted in a 77 point scale, ranging from 11 (most uncomfortable) to 77 (most comfortable).
Comfort index versus time of use
Within the scope of this study, an analysis was undertaken of the relation between the CI and time of use (TU), expressed in minutes per week. The overall results of both TU and CI are presented in Tables 4 and 5.
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The main objective of such an analysis was to determine whether the tested group (different companies and workplaces) or HPD variables (earmuff or earplug) have any influence on the values of CI or TU. A two-way ANOVA was applied for this purpose, and the results are presented in Tables 6 and 7.
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On the basis of the analyses undertaken, it can be concluded that:
there is significant evidence of variation in the CI, both with group tested and HPD;
there is also significant evidence of variation in TU, both with group tested and HPD;
variations with the group and HPD factors are both significant at the 0.005 level.
A Spearman correlation index (rs) was used to study the relation between the two mentioned parameters, CI and TU. Table 8 presents the correlations obtained between CI and TU when comparing each HPD and each group, as well as the overall correlation.
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In order to verify whether the correlations between CI and TU were clinically significant, a linear regression analysis was applied. For this purpose CI was considered as the independent variable and TU as the dependent one. For this analysis, the significance threshold was fixed at P = 0.05. Tables 9 and 10 show the results obtained. A statistically significant (P < 0.001) ß coefficient of 0.822 was obtained. A R2 of 0.675 shows that 67.5% of TU variations are explained by CI, i.e. the independent variable.
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‘Real’ attenuation
Based on the mean TU for each protector, a real attenuation was calculated using equation (1), the daily noise exposure data (Table 1) and the catalogued attenuation (SNR) for each device (Table 2). Table 11 shows the ‘real’ attenuation of each device (R) and the resulting effective daily exposure levels for each of the four workplaces studied.
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Analysing Table 11 it is possible to verify that with two HPD (3 and 4) the daily exposure levels remain above the action level, which is 85 dB(A) in Portuguese legislation, hence only two of the studied devices seem to protect workers adequately.
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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMATERIALS AND METHODSRESULTSDISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONSREFERENCES |
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On the basis of the study and the results obtained, the following conclusions can be drawn.
There are no significant differences in the sensation of comfort between the same type of HPD. In other words, CI values obtained only differ when comparing earplugs and earmuffs. No significant differences have been found among the different types of earplugs or earmuffs, although only two types of each were examined.
The positive correlation between CI and TU is statistically significant, i.e. HPD with higher CI values also have higher TU values, and vice versa.
There are substantial differences between nominal (catalogued) attenuation and effective (real) attenuation. This feature is more evident for earmuffs.
Further work must be done in order to confirm the results in other environments, specifically with low educational background workers, which would also increase the sample size.
From the study it was possible to verify that comfort, or a subjective feeling of comfort, while being a possible quantifying parameter, depends on a wide range of factors. Thus, the selection of HPD must, whenever possible, be made by both workers, managers and staff from the health and safety department. The variety of HPDs currently available, with respect to sizes and configurations, is enough to allow the workers a more personalized and adequate choice which will, in turn, significantly improve their compliance with the obligation of usage of hearing protection.
Finally, it must not be ignored that the role played by the workers and their attitude towards the use of hearing protection will ultimately determine the overall success of any hearing conservation programme. In this respect it is extremely important that adequate attention is directed, at all organizational levels, to issues relating to worker training and education regarding health and safety matters, in general, and hearing protection and conservation, in particular.
Acknowledgements—The authors wish to thank the companies involved and all employees who participated in this work. This research was funded by the Institute for the Development and Inspection of Working Conditions of the Portuguese Ministry of Labour and Solidarity.
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +35-1253-510276; fax: +35-1253-510268; e-mail: parezes@dps.uminho.pt
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