청력보호구

Free on-site hearing conservation training for your employees! Learn more

Safety eLearning Portal:

This is a unique, customized portal that provides helpful training and education resources for hearing conservation enthusiasts, students and instructors. Learn More

Hearing Conservation Seminars:

There's no better way to educate yourself and your staff about the current regulations, equipment choices, employee training programs and legal issues related to noise hazards and hearing conservation. Conducted by two of the industry's most respected hearing experts, these day-long seminars discuss, in detail, how to asses noise problems and properly protect your employees. View Schedule and Registration

E-A-RCAL is one of three facilities within 3M’s Indianapolis Acoustical Laboratories. It was established in 1979 and has offered contract testing for the measurement of real-ear attenuation at threshold (REAT) of hearing protection devices (HPDs) since 1992. Previous clients include Mobil Research and Development Corp., Quest Electronics, Etymotic Research, Welch Allyn, and other corporations and government agencies.

The Facility
Testing is conducted in a 113-m3 double-wall structure with isolated outer and inner foundations. The Sound Transmission Class (STC) of the combined structure exceeds 75 dB, providing noise levels in the room of <16 dBA (approximately 20 dB in the 125-Hz octave band). Measurements can be conducted over an extended frequency range, from 80 Hz to 16 kHz.

Accreditation:
E-A-RCAL was the first facility accredited by the Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP Lab Code 100374-0) to conduct tests in conformance with ANSI S3.19-1974, and is also accredited for the most current REAT standard, ANSI S12.6-2016. In achieving accreditation, the laboratory has demonstrated competence and adherence to a rigorous set of procedural, quality-control, and recordkeeping requirements. Accreditation is maintained via both regular internal audits, and external audits conducted by NVLAP assessors.

History of the Facility:
The E-A-RCAL facility was designed by and constructed under the supervision of Elliott H. Berger in 1977, and has been utilized for hearing protector testing since 1979. During the past 37 years, more than 2300 REAT evaluations have been conducted. E-A-RCAL Laboratory participated in an EPA interlaboratory comparison study of hearing protector attenuation measurements which was conducted in the early 1980s, and in two interlaboratory comparisons in the following decades, one sponsored by the Acoustical Society of America’s accredited standards working group S12/WG11, and the other by the same WG, along with EPA and NIOSH. These studies led to the development of ANSI S12.6-1997, S12.6-2008, and S12.6-2016, the most recent American standard on "Methods for measuring the real-ear attenuation of hearing protectors."