Market demand

The demand for electroacoustic devices and measurement is worldwide, with many applications and stakeholders, and in many countries the control and measurement of noise is covered by law or legislative directives.

The range of users of the standards will include governments, local authorities, planners, the medical profession, health and safety professionals and agencies, environmental noise consultants and agencies, manufacturers of instrumentation and equipment, as well as the many laboratories and test houses around the world.

Users of IEC TC 29 standards include international and national standards organizations, and in many countries the international standards are directly adopted with no change as equivalent national standards, with the number of adopting countries increasing.

As an example, noise is the second largest form of environmental pollution (after air quality) and has been identified by the World Health Organisation as the second largest health risk in Western Europe. Up to 170 million citizens in the EU alone are said to be living in areas where the noise levels were such as to cause serious annoyance during daytime. Also, reports from some countries found that some 30% of the population are highly disturbed by road traffic noise. Measures to be taken to reduce the noise are normally very expensive and must be based on proven facts. Similarly, ability to make reliable measurement of aircraft noise is vital to the aircraft and airline industries, airport operators and regulators, central government and the general population.

Noise induced hearing impairment is one of the most frequent occupational hazards resulting in large social expense. Equipment for the measurement and analysis of noise as covered by IEC TC 29, is in high demand and allows facts to be gathered based on accurate and reproducible measurements. Worldwide research in psychoacoustics is aiming at a better understanding of human reactions to noise exposure that certainly will call for further development of measuring techniques and instrumentation. Hearing assessment is now carried out routinely at all stages of life from birth to old age. High quality data yielded by well-specified audiometric equipment can lead to early detection and greater success in reducing further risk or in remedial treatment with hearing aids.

Hearing aid performance, specification and measurement is the subject of a series of standards produced by IEC TC 29. The associated standardization of ear simulators and head and torso simulators for measuring performance has allowed a better understanding to be found of the relationship between subjective and objective measurements. The effect of these standards and the standards for induction loop systems, has been to improve the means by which the vast majority of hard of hearing people communicate, and so improve their quality of life.

The ability to accurately measure the threshold of hearing is crucial to hearing conservation programmes, the early detection of hearing loss in children and the diagnosis of hearing loss. IEC TC 29 works in conjunction with ISO/IEC TC 43 to ensure that standards for thresholds of hearing and other techniques for audiometry are integrated. The same close cooperation also takes place on the integration of measurement methods and the necessary instrumentation for determination of acoustic power emission from machinery, total noise exposure of workers during a work day, etc.