Affiliation:
1. now at Occupational and Environmental
Medicine Gothenburg University, Sweden
Abstract
From 203 cases of low-frequency complaints a random selection of twenty-one cases were investigated. The main aim was to answer the question whether the annoyance is caused by an external physical sound or by a perceived but physically non-existing sound, i.e. low-frequency tinnitus. Noise recordings were made in the homes of the complainants, and the complainants were exposed to these in blind test listening experiments. Furthermore, the low-frequency hearing function of the complainants was investigated, and characteristics of the annoying sound were matched. The results showed that some of the complainants are annoyed by a physical sound (20–180 Hz), while others suffer from low-frequency tinnitus (perceived frequency 40–100 Hz). Physical sound at frequencies below 20 Hz (infrasound) is not responsible for the annoyance -or at all audible – in any of the investigated cases, and none of the complainants has extraordinary hearing sensitivity at low frequencies. For comparable cases of low-frequency noise complaints in general, it is anticipated that physical sound is responsible in a substantial part of the cases, while low-frequency tinnitus is responsible in another substantial part of the cases.
Subject
Mechanical Engineering,Geophysics,Mechanics of Materials,Acoustics and Ultrasonics,Building and Construction,Civil and Structural Engineering
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