Further investigation in the responses of firemen to noise

Abstract

A further study consisting of acoustic and subjective measurements of 552 Chinese firemen at 12 fire stations in Hong Kong has been carried out. Annoyance with aircraft and traffic noise conditions, as expressed by the firemen, was found to correlate well with the acoustic measurements. For aircraft noise the correlation of annoyance with the Number and Noise Index (NNI) was slightly better than with the dB(A) peak value. For traffic noise the similar correlation with the mean sound pressure levels which exceeds 10 % of the sampling period (L 10) was slightly better than with the Noise Pollution Level and the Traffic Noise Index. The correlation of the arousal due to the aircraft and traffic noise was similarly found to depend on the NNI and L 10 values. However, traffic noise was responsible for more disturbance than aircraft noise. The study demonstrated the desirability of adopting indoor acoustic measurements instead of outdoor measurements for any survey of this kind. © 1976.