Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

By Anthony Thomas at 12:50 PM | Permalink

In "Challenging Designs of Neonatal Intensive Care Units", Anne Marie Dazé Floyd, RN, MSN, CNS says:
A link has been established between exposure to constant room noise and loss in frequency and pattern discrimination essential to understanding the spoken word. Loss of an ability to discriminate speech can cause profound developmental delay by interfering with language acquisition.
In addition to the connection between noise levels and deficits in hearing discrimination, clear connections also exist between noise and physiological instability.

Continue reading "NOISE IN THE NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT (NICU)" »

By Anthony Thomas at 11:39 AM | Permalink

Nurse researchers have provided evidence that hospital critical care unit (CCU) noise may put patients at risk of sleep problems. The study, by M Topf and M Bookman at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, goes on to say that technological advances in CCU's are contributing to this problem and that the results provide support for the hypothesis that CCU sound levels impact negatively on subjective sleep.

Continue reading "PATIENTS RISK SLEEP PROBLEMS FROM NOISE IN HOSPITAL CRITICAL CARE UNITS" »

By Anthony Thomas at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Birmingham Women's Hospital NHS Trust took part in a regional campaign to raise awareness of noise levels in Neonatal Units and the need to reduce them. Lead by Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Cheryl Lewis, the campaign highlighted the impact noise can have on babies, and included staff training, posters and badges, and the use of a Decibel Monitor in the Unit.

Neonatal Units can be very noisy places, with the amount of medical equipment, alarms, telephones and people's voices, and this can impact upon the babies' development.

Continue reading "Campaign to reduce noise in Neonatal Units" »

By Anthony Thomas at 2:16 PM | Permalink

ANSWER: At least, adding absorption to a room will help to prevent tinnitus.
Scientists from the California Ear Institute in San Ramon, California have discovered a potential cure for some instances of tinnitus in the nerve agent Botox. One in four tinnitus patients in a study experienced improvement in their symptoms following treatment with Botox, 16 reported no change and three said their tinnitus had become worse.

Of course preventing Tinnitus should be priority number one. Applying stricter acoustic demands will benefit the ones suffering from Tinnitus and will support to prevent tinnitus. Effiicient absorbing ceiling panels and wall panels will support the decrease of sound pressure levels.

Read more about the tests

By Per Larsen at 1:04 PM | Permalink

From March to June this year, huge screening on 7-years old children’s hearing was done in 7 eastern provinces of Poland (with 42,3 % of total country population). During 4 months, 85% of seven years old children on this territory were examined. The results point out that 20% of them have different forms of permanent or temporary hearing impairment. Big scale of this problem indicate that more strict classroom acoustic demands, used to determine environment for hearing impaired persons, should be applied commonly to all types of schools.

Continue reading "WHAT YOU CAN HEAR, SEVEN YEARS OLD ?" »

By Mikołaj Jarosz at 11:04 PM | Permalink

Different room acoustic descriptors correspond to different human sound attributes. These attributes can, for ordinary rooms, be described as reverberance, speech clarity, auditory strength and spatial decay. If you want to know more about room acoustic descriptors, press here!
If you want to know which technical room acoustic descriptors Ecophon recommends matching these human attributes, please see below for;

Reverberance
Speech clarity
Auditory strength
Spatial decay

By Carsten Svensson at 6:43 PM | Permalink

The Essex study ran for 5 months during the academic year 2007/8 during which period classrooms were repeatedly modified acoustically. Many objective and subjective measures were obtained and initial findings have been described as ‘very powerful’!

Continue reading "The Essex School Study - optimum classroom acoustics" »

By Carsten Svensson at 4:25 PM | Permalink

Dutch sports teachers (PE teachers) sued their employers for suffering serious hearing impairment because of working in a poor acoustic environment. The schools that employed the PE teachers compensate the teachers financially.

The Dutch Royal Society of Physical Exercise Teachers (KVLO) http://www.kvlo.nl/ supports the teachers in this matter.

Continue reading "Poor room acoustics impairs sport teachers´ hearing" »

By Carsten Svensson at 2:07 PM | Permalink

Ill. Logica Call Centre, Bridgend, UK

A lot has been written about working conditions in call centres and other customer contact centres, but actually very little about acoustics. Apart from the fact that they are noisy and that employees tend to suffer from noise exposure similar to that of industry workers.
That is why, the French Stadardization body AFNOR, supported by INRS, a French Institute competent in the area of occupational risk prevention, organizes a full day on the subject. Some of the contributions:
- ergonomical approach
- hearing risks related to call centre work
- acoustic perfomance of call centre facilities: descriptors, workstation treatment vs room acoustic treatment, developments in head set technology and training of workers.

Venue: AFNOR, St Denis
Date: 19th of November, 9.15 - 17.15

Access the invitation

By Marc Janssen at 9:11 AM | Permalink

"The acoustical evaluation of rooms requires several room acoustic descriptors. Reverberation time alone is not enough!" says Erling Nilsson, Acoustics Specialist at Ecophon.

Room Acoustic Comfort™ (RAC™) means that, when performing an evaluation of room acoustics, it is important to take into account different types of rooms and what people do there.
Give priority to the different acoustic properties such as reverberance, speech clarity and sound level, depending on what the room is used

To learn what you can do to achieve Room Acoustic Comfort™, simply look here
To get the information in othere languages than english, go here and choose your country

By Marc Janssen at 4:10 PM | Permalink

Voice is a basic tool for teachers. Chronic voice disorders, very common among teaching staff, cause long term sick leaves or leaving the job for good (for other profession or for disability pension). In Poland, chronic voice disorders as a group of diseases are formally recognized as occupational disease. In 2007, officially confirmed voice disorders cases were the biggest group (24,4%) of all occupational diseases in Poland

Continue reading "VOICE DISORDERS AMONG TEACHERS AS AN OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE" »

By Mikołaj Jarosz at 2:01 PM | Permalink

Noise can make it more difficult to cope with pain. A nursing study performed by Barbra Blake Minckley showed that twice the number of patients were administrated pain medication when noise levels were “High” compared with “Low” or “Middle”.

Even quite moderate noise levels can potentially disturb the process of caring for the patient.
She said "If there was a way to facilitate the communication between staff members as well as prevent noise from propagating in the room, it would most likely become a more patient friendly environment".

Continue reading "Less noise - less need for pain medication" »

By Marc Janssen at 11:52 AM | Permalink

A recent study called "Noise exposure in a neonatogical care unit and in incubators" demonstrated a far from ideal environment for neonatals inside incubators.

Summary
The noise exposure of premature infants in incubators is determined by the noise situation in the neonatological care unit and on the other hand by acoustical properties of the incubator, which should shield the premature infant against an excess of noise beside the primary life-saving functions. The noise inside a neonatological care unit is caused by lot of supplying and controlling devices provided with loud alarm functions, but also by the nursing staff and visitors.

The report can be ordered here

Continue reading "Noise inside incubators - quietest hour 49 dB(A)!" »

By Marc Janssen at 11:41 AM | Permalink

The new HTM (Health Technical Memorandum) gives Design Criteria for Room Acoustics in UK Healthcare Premises.
The document's Executive Summary states "Noise can increase heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate and even blood cholesterol levels. Good acoustic conditions improve patient privacy and dignity, and promote essential sleep patterns. Such conditions are key to healing"
Recently published, it requires acoustic treatment, usually ceilings, to be provided in all occupied areas, including corridors.
"The requirement is ...

Continue reading "HTM 08-01 NEW UK ACOUSTIC GUIDANCE FOR HEALTHCARE" »

By Anthony Thomas at 3:37 PM | Permalink