Dosimetry measurements using a probe tube microphone in the ear canal.

Federal and international standards recommended use of microphone placement either on or in the vicinity of the shoulder for dosimetry to minimize deviations from the undisturbed sound field. Probe microphone measurements from the ear canal were compared to shoulder and chest measures in order to investigate the validity of current dosimetry methodologies. Six subjects were monitored in an industrial setting. As expected, ear-canal levels exceeded other measures for all subjects. Shoulder and chest measures showed very low intersubject variability whereas ear-canal measures resulted in large intersubject variability. The ear-canal methodology has the potential to identify individuals whose external ear gain exceed the mean, putting them at increased risk of noise-induced permanent threshold shift (NIPTS). It is proposed that overall external ear pressure gain be used as an index to adjust exposure levels when predicting NIPTS using ISO 1999. A normative database of external ear pressure gain was constructed from 30 ears for this purpose.