Noise & health
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The association of aircraft noise exposure with cognitive performance was examined by means of a cross-sectional field survey. Two hundred thirty six children attending 10 primary schools around Heathrow Airport in west London were tested on reading comprehension, immediate/delayed recall and sustained attention. In order to obtain the information about their background, a questionnaire was delivered to the parents and 163 answers were collected. ⋯ A significant dose-response relationship was found between aircraft noise exposure at home and performance on memory tests of immediate/delayed recall. However there was no strong association with the other cognitive outcomes. These results suggest that aircraft noise exposure at home may affect children's memory.
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Comparative Study
Instruction and the improvement of hearing protector performance.
Too often, in spite of the encouragement of those who advocate the removal of noise from the workplace as the preferred solution to noise exposure, hearing protectors are provided as the first line of defence against noise. Unfortunately hearing protectors are too often supplied with no real instruction or education in their use. This degrades their performance considerably. ⋯ The attenuation performance (SLC80) of the plugs with the instructions was 16 dB greater than without the instructions. Overall performance was improved in every octave band with smaller associated standard deviations. The comparison showed that even with a very modest amount of instruction attenuation performance can be significantly improved.