Construction of Half Masks for the Respiratory Tract Protection and the Speech Intelligibility Assessed from the Measured Suppression of Sound

Half masks (a.k.a. filtering facepieces, FFP) are personal protective equipment against dust in a work environment. Their filtration efficiency is legally regulated. Occupational safety and health services have not paid enough attention to speech disruption caused by FFPs, even though the latter could impair verbal communication and result in discomfort or increased risk of accidents. This study deals with the objective differences in speech suppression between masks of various construction belonging to the same filtration class, FFP2, and equipped with exhalation valves. We applied an objective method of white noise attenuation, suggested in our previous work. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that the acoustic apparati are applied in the whole procedure, and no human speakers/listeners participation is required. We compared seven types of masks: three moulded, one moulded with folded elements, two folded horizontally, and one vertically. We determined attenuation caused by the masks in 1/3 octave-wide bands with centre frequency from 100 Hz to 20 kHz. All the studied FFPs attenuated sound waves in a frequency range responsible for 80–90% of the perceived speech intelligibility. The attenuations of moulded masks were ca. 3 dB higher in 1–16 kHz bands than those of folded ones. The moulded mask with foldable parts for better fitting the face suppressed the high-pitch tones considerably more than the other masks. These observations were confirmed quantitatively by the cluster analysis based on the Euclidean distances between the acoustic spectra.