THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTIVE MASKING UPON SMOKE GENERATOR AND FUEL SUPPLY TEAM PERFORMANCE (AN ANALYSIS OF AN EXPERIMENT CONDUCTED BY THE U. S. ARMY CHEMICAL CORPS)

The following conclusions apply to the daylight performance, under cool pleasant weather conditions, of teams thoroughly practiced in their jobs and experienced in wearing the mask 1 On the average, the decrement in job performance caused by wearing the protective mask is about 5 per cent for smoke generator and fuel supply teams, though specific performances fluctuate widely about this value. 2 When the protective mask is worn for four hours on each of three consecutive working days, there is no evidence to indicate that performance decrement either increases or decreases systematically. Nor is there evidence for any systematic change in the decrement as a result of a subsequent bivouac experience involving 68 hours of masking.