Some Individual Differences in Human Response to Infrasound

摘要

A review of literature describing the effects of very low frequency sound on humans revealed a controversy between authors claiming that infrasound is very harmful to humans and those claiming that infrasound cannot engender any subjective or objective symptoms. It is shown that these discrepancies may be explained by individual variability in response to low frequency sound. An experiment was performed to determine whether some individuals are uniquely sensitive to infrasound. Three acoustic conditions were employed. These consisted of a control (amplifier hum) condition and two 8 Hz infrasound conditions: a high distortion signal and a low distortion signal. Subjects were grouped by their subjective responses. No control subjects exposed to amplifier hum reported any adverse responses. The distribution of symptoms (headache and fatigue vs dizziness and nausea) between the high and low distortion groups was significantly different. In persons reporting symptoms, the higher level of harmonics was primarily associated with headache and fatigue, while reduction of harmonics primarily resulted in diziness and nausea.