Effects of Exposure to Intense Tones in Water While Wearing Wet-Suit Hoods

摘要

Wet-suited and hooded divers were exposed to 3500 hertz tone pulses (25% and 50% duty cycles) at sound pressure levels up to 192 dB above 20 micropascal for durations of up to one hour. Temporary auditory-threshold shifts were measured. An exposure of sixty minutes at 191 dB produced thresholds shifts of 40 dB (two minutes post-exposure) but exposures at lower sound pressures for twenty minutes or less produced moderate or no threshold shifts. Non-auditory effects that were startling to the divers when first encountered were also investigated. They included spraying of water within face masks, a perceptible pressure, and visual-field displacements. Although annoying, none of the non-auditory effects was apparently immediately harmful to the divers. Keywords: Noise, Stress physiology. (kt)