Safety equipment supplier Dromex has launched its voice amplification respiratory protection to address the challenge of standard respirators hindering communication. Respirators muffle speech, thereby making it difficult for a user to be heard or understood.

The company states that compliance is one of the biggest challenges that the industry faces, with a particular area of concern being communication difficulties on the shop floor.

Many employees often compromise their personal safety by lifting, removing, pulling or dropping their respirator so that they can be heard, leaving them exposed to toxic airborne substances in a respirator-zoned area.

The removal of respirator protection is a safety violation that can lead to illness, chronic health issues and potentially death, depending on the duration of exposure to the polluted air.

Consequently, Dromex developed a voice amplification respirator and, while such communication devices exist, many of them were designed for first responders, fire fighters, special police or military units to use as self-contained breathing apparatus that uses radio communication and a full-face respirator.

In military and emergency response environments, effective communication is regarded as inherent to effectively executing the tasks at hand, with measures to facilitate free- flowing, audible and reliable communication adopted as minimum standards, explains Dromex marketing and brand strategy head Andrew Mysell.

However, very few devices are available for ambient applications that cater for large workforces to communicate effectively and daily on the shop floor.

Effective communication is, therefore, not always possible despite communication – such as audible warnings or the conveyance of key safety considerations – often being critical to worker safety.

“The main technical challenge was designing a compact unit that was light enough for the employees to wear comfortably while amplifying [their] . . . voices in a natural and recognisable way,” Mysell states.

Dromex began an iterative design process to progressively optimise the size and weight of the unit while facilitating the natural delivery of users’ speech.

This was followed by 19 months of design work, with the company successfully creating a prototype and conducting further testing and development, which resulted in a patent being awarded in 2019.

The amplification device was designed to seamlessly integrate with respirators to clearly project a user’s voice, but it had to be refined for commercial production on a large scale. This required further technical adjustments and investment before it could be successfully brought to market.

The new amplification technology eliminates the need to remove respirator masks to communicate and, in so doing, eliminates the risk of users inhaling anything that could harm their health, Mysell states.

Dromex’s team of technical respiratory product experts will conduct on-site training – which will also include printed and video-support material – for end-users.

Mysell adds that the mask and voice amplification will encourage compliance and consistent use.

“The best strategy in improving compliance is information, awareness and training. Informing workers of the risks associated with their specific environments, awareness of the impact that these risks could have on their health and training them on which products and process they need to adopt to help mitigate these risks is the key to changing worker behaviour around personal protective equipment compliance,” he concludes.