抄録
Comfort is an important characteristic of hearing protectors, perhaps as important as sound attenuation. Different approaches were taken by researchers to study comfort: some did literature searches; others did lab studies, and some others did both: lab and field studies. In general, the lab studies were of short duration, which some researchers claim leads to the same results as those of long duration. When studying comfort of earmuffs, some focused on the force exerted against the head, while others were interested in the pressure. There are also studies regarding the influence of heat and humidity on comfort. Finally, some tried to put together sound attenuation and comfort. Almost all of them made use of questionnaires to quantify the weight of different factors of discomfort. This paper analyzes some of the relatively small number of studies on comfort done in the last 25 years. It is intended to serve as a background document for developing a procedure for ranking hearing protectors on the basis of their physical characteristics.
