Rachel van Besouw’s Post

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HM Specialist Inspector of Health and Safety (Noise and Vibration) at Health and Safety Executive

It is no surprise that the larger the lughole, the lower the attenuation for “one-size-fits-most” earplugs... what is interesting is the number of workers who are unlikely to achieve the derated NRR*. A team from ETS, IRSST and CRCLM in Canada have recently published this paper in the International Journal of Audiology 👇. For a largely male sample of workers exposed to occupational noise (sample size = 121, 103 male, 18 female) 12.7 % of ear canals (all male) were in the XXL or XXXL size categories, giving lower earplug attenuation. The authors conclude that the 3M Eargage earcanal sizing tool "can serve as a straightforward tool to identify earcanals for which specific earplugs are not suitable". *the US NRR is calculated using the mean attenuation minus 2 SD as opposed to 1 SD for the SNR used in the UK/EU, and is therefore typically (but not always) lower...  https://lnkd.in/eHhA-3Ug

Reliability of an extended version of the 3m™ Eargage tool to assess earcanal size and assist earplug selection

Reliability of an extended version of the 3m™ Eargage tool to assess earcanal size and assist earplug selection

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