Speech Intelligibility While Wearing Civilian Full-Facepiece Air-Purifying Respirators

Abstract

In situations where law enforcement officers are wearing air-purifying respirators (APRs) and communicating either with each other or the public, intelligible speech can be critical. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) requires a 70% speech intelligibility performance rating for commercial chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) APR certification. As the score is not released, there is no way to know which respirators perform better than others. This effort assessed the speech intelligibility of 12 NIOSH-certified CBRN APRs. Statistically, the Millenium and FR-M40 had significantly higher scores than the FR-7800B. The Millenium also scored significantly higher than the M-TAC. In situations where speech is critical, the Millenium and FR-M40 would be expected to provide higher speech intelligibility than the FR-7800B.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA522481

Entities

People

  • Daniel J. Barker
  • Karen M. Coyne

Organizations

  • Edgewood Chemical Biological Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Background Noise
  • Data Analysis
  • Department Of Homeland Security
  • Homeland Security
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Intelligibility
  • Law Enforcement
  • Law Enforcement Officers
  • Occupational Safety And Health
  • Performance Tests
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Protective Equipment
  • Respirators
  • Safety
  • Test Methods
  • Word Lists

Readers

  • Aviation Safety Risk Assessment.
  • Military Engineering.
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.