Loss of wearability of hearing protectors

Many workers spend most of the day working with high noise levels. Wearing personal protective equipment safeguards the worker’s long-term well-being. Despite the worker’s diligence, knowledge does not examine exposure to specific risks to the worker’s health. Threats are the high sound levels the worker subjects their ears to daily. Any loud sound can be dangerous. A more common contribution to hearing damage can be headphones. The regulation recalls the evaluation of headphones in the time and frequency domain. The research estimates the noise level in the worker’s external environment and ear to assess the efficiency of headphones in the frequency domain. The double channel comparison measurement technique enables the simultaneous evaluation of noise exposure on both sides of the head and in configurations such as under a headset and on a shoulder. By comparing the measurement with the external ear of the internal worker, the experimental investigation in the frequency domain can improve the accuracy of noise exposure data in various working environments. This valuable ability is beneficial for assessing the asymmetric exposure of the worker’s ears to noise.