Survey of animal shelter noise levels

The construction and social aspects of a kennel can result in very high noise levels due to the barking of the dogs, primarily triggered by the presence of staff personnel. These high sound levels are detrimental to both the dogs and the staff / volunteers. This study focuses on the impact of a single "typical" facility's construction on its acoustic environment and examines potential approaches for improving the environment. The kennel is 10.85 m long, 5.72 m wide, and 2.2 m high with painted concrete floors and hard-surfaced walls. These surfaces provide little acoustic absorption and result in relatively long reverberation times. Peak levels within a kennel have been measured as high as 106 dBF with a corresponding Leq of 103.2 dBF (101.6 dBA). These very high levels significantly exceed the OSHA TWA level of 85 dBA for eight hour exposure for initiation of hearing monitoring. The measured reverberation times of one to two seconds in the speech interference bands, together with the measured noise spectra, demonstrate that the kennel constitutes a poor speech intelligibility environment. The results show that the sound levels increase with the number of dogs participating, but the excitement level of the dogs is more important than the specific number of dogs present. Several potential treatment schemes are presented that should result in an improved acoustic environment.