Individual work performance during a 10-hour period of respirator wear

A study was performed to test the effects of fatigue and food deprivation on performance while wearing respirator masks. Eleven subjects performed cognitive, psychomotor, and motor tasks, arranged in blocks of 3 hours and performed in round-robin sequence. Performance data and additional psychological and physiological information were obtained. Respirator masks were found to have little effect on task performance even with food intake denied. Fatigue and food deprivation had little effect on performance in the unmasked condition. The only measure that reflected fatigue effects was the psychological profile of mood states. An ancillary study involving five subjects who were allowed to ingest food during the day did not show any performance improvement over subjects without food.

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