Progress in the Development of Hearing Protection
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Behavior, Chronic Disease and Health Promotion".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 4212
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Hearing protectors have been around for a very long time in one shape or other. In his epic poem Odyssey (8-7 BC), Homer mentions that Odysseus had his sailors’ ears plugged up with beeswax to avoid listening to the Sirens. Wax plugs, however, have only been in use since the early 1960s, with new products flooding the market following the end of WW2, and it is only in the last 20–30 years that we have seen real progress in the field. This is most evident through the appearance of protectors intended to solve specific problems, such as protection from impulse noise, intelligibility of speech in noise, forward masking from low frequency noise, etc.
Progress has been also made in collateral fields, such as standardization, testing, and labeling. One would think that by now, there are no more problems regarding hearing protectors and that, in consequence, everyone in need of protection will wear them.
We all know, however, that this is not the case. Time and again, researchers find that people either do not use protectors or do not use them properly. There are many reasons behind this, but comfort appears to be the predominant issue. Strange as it may sound, we still do not have a clear-cut definition of comfort—we still do not know how to measure it, and we are a long way from having a standard on comfort.
This is perhaps the main issue that needs to be solved first, rather than focusing on achieving extra dB of attenuation which will be of little usefulness if the devices that offer this are not worn.
We invite you to submit to this Special Issue papers that help to fill that important gap in our knowledge.
Prof. Dr. Alberto Behar
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- noise
- hearing
- hearing loss
- hearing protectors: history
- problems with HP
- hearing protectors and comfort
- acceptance of hearing protectors
- conventional hearing protectors
- specialized hearing protectors
- speech intelligibility
- perception of alarm signal
- testing of hearing protectors
- labeling of hearing protectors
- standards for HPs
