Journal of occupational and environmental hygiene
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J Occup Environ Hyg · Oct 2008
Correlation between respirator fit and respirator fit test panel cells by respirator size.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), recognizing the difficulties inherent in using old military data to define modern industrial respirator fit test panels, recently completed a study to develop an anthropometric database of the measurements of heads and faces of civilian respirator users. Based on the data collected, NIOSH researchers developed two new panels for fit testing half-facepiece and full-facepiece respirators. One of the new panels (NIOSH bivariate panel) uses face length and face width. ⋯ Face sizes classified by the PCA panel also followed a similar pattern with respirator fit although not quite as consistently. For the LANL panel, however, both small and medium faces achieved best fit in small size respirators, and large faces achieved best fit in medium respirators. These findings support the selection of the facial dimensions for developing the new NIOSH bivariate respirator fit test panel.