Open plan offices are now the most common form of workspaces organisation. They can improve communication between workers while saving space. Their main drawbacks are the lack of intimacy for occupants and the increase of noise level. Noise is one of the most important annoyance factor as described by workers (see SBISB study, 2010). This paper describes a study aiming at a better knowledge of ...

This study evaluates the perceptual effects of single-microphone noise reduction in hearing aids. Twenty subjects with moderate sensorineural hearing loss listened to speech in babble noise processed via noise reduction from three different linearly fitted hearing aids. Subjects performed (a) speech-intelligibility tests, (b) listening-effort ratings, and (c) paired-comparison ratings on noise ...

Annoyance reactions to different types of landing procedures were addressed in a controlled laboratory setting using a Virtual Community Noise Simulator (VCNS) with a head mounted display. Participants, standing on a virtual countryside road, experienced four types of descent flyovers by an A330 aircraft: a regular descent flyover at 2000ft and CDAs at respectively 3000, 4000 and 5000ft. These ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the annoyance of tinnitus in normal-hearing patients and to correlate it with outer hair cell function and with anxiety and depression disorders. STUDY DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING Tertiary care medical center. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Sixty-eight patients with tinnitus (study group) and a control group consisting of 46 subjects without tinnitus were studied. The s...

OBJECTIVE Odor exposure is an environmental stressor that is responsible of many citizens complains about air pollution in non-urban areas. However, information about the exposure-response relation is scarce. One of the main challenges is to identify a measurable compound that can be related with odor annoyance responses. We investigated the association between regional and temporal variation o...

Noise and odour annoyances are important considerations in research on health effects of air pollution and traffic noise. Cumulative exposures can occur via several chemical hazards or a combination of chemical and stressor-based hazards, and related health outcomes can be generalized as manifestations of physiological and/or psychological stress responses. A major research challenge in this fi...

Low frequency noise, the frequency range from about 10 Hz to 200 Hz, has been recognised as a special environmental noise problem, particularly to sensitive people in their homes. Conventional methods of assessing annoyance, typically based on A-weighted equivalent level, are inadequate for low frequency noise and lead to incorrect decisions by regulatory authorities. There have been a large nu...

The exposure-response relationships for road traffic noise annoyance in Vietnam were proposed according to over 4700 responses obtained in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang, Hue and Thai Nguyen. However, the variation of the exposure-response curves found among the five cities implied that discrepancies could occur between different geographic regions like the north and the south of Vietnam. To asses...

There is a lack of studies assessing the exposure-response relationship between transportation noise and annoyance in North America. Our aims were to investigate the prevalence of noise annoyance induced by road traffic, trains and airplanes in relation to distance to transportation noise sources, and to total environmental noise levels in Montreal, Canada; annoyance was assessed as noise-induc...

Total annoyance due to combined noises is still difficult to predict adequately. This scientific gap is an obstacle for noise action planning, especially in urban areas where inhabitants are usually exposed to high noise levels from multiple sources. In this context, this work aims to highlight potential to enhance the prediction of total annoyance. The work is based on a simulated environment ...