Procedures for Conducting Small Arms Noise Dose Escalation Research
Abstract
Exposure to small arms noise can cause both temporary and permanent hearing loss. The requirement to balance the prevention of hearing loss and the need for Service Member readiness, lethality, and survivability drives the design and procurement of weapons and hearing protection, health hazard evaluations, and training and operational doctrine. Damage-risk criteria (DRCs), which are algorithms used to estimate the risk posed by an exposure, should inform this balance. Modern DRCs disagree widely about the hazard posed by an impulsive noise. The current technical report describes procedures designed to identify the maximum tolerable dose (MTD) for impulse noises produced by small arms. This is a quasi-experimental dose-escalation study, wherein a noise dose is slowly increased by monotonic increases in impulse repetitions. For example, an impulse might be presented 1, 3, 8, 23, and 64 times on exposure days 1 through 5, respectively. The purpose of the procedures reported here is to identify the DRC that comes closest to predicting the empirical MTD without exceeding it.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 07, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1112644
Entities
People
- Gregory A. Flamme
- Heath G. Jones
- Kristy K Deiters
- Madeline V. Smith
- Stephen M. Tasko
- William A. Ahroon
Organizations
- United States Army Aeromedical Research Lab