Law Enforcement Head-Borne Personal Protective Equipment Hearing Attenuation

Abstract

Test methods were developed to quantify and assess the effects of personal protection equipment (PPE) on hearing. The tests use a head and torso simulator that is able to don PPE and employs advanced acoustic, signal processing, and measurement techniques. The tests measure localization and speech intelligibility effects of PPE. The methods also assess the effects of noise generated by PPE fabric and/or electro/mechanical noise. Localization effects are evaluated in terms of the Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF). Speech intelligibility is evaluated using the Speech Transmission Index (STI). Results show that HRTF and STI scores are significantly altered with various PPE and PPE-created noise.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA498436

Entities

People

  • Joshua Haijeck
  • Qi Li
  • Tom Burchfield

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Counter WMD

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Attenuation
  • Digital Signal Processing
  • Ear
  • Frequency Bands
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Intelligibility
  • Law Enforcement
  • Losses
  • Measurement
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Protective Equipment
  • Signal Processing
  • Simulators
  • Speech Transmission
  • Test Methods
  • Transfer Functions
  • Transmission Loss

Readers

  • Auditory Neuroscience/Auditory Physiology.
  • Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Data Science/Digital Signal Processing.
  • Explosive Engineering.