Noise At Work
The Noise Regulations 2005 require employers to prevent or reduce risks to health and safety from exposure to noise at work. All employees have duties under the Regulations.
The regulations require you as an employer to:
- Assess the risks to your employees from noise at work.
- Take action to reduce the noise exposure that produce those risks;
- Provide your employees with hearing protection if you cannot reduce the noise exposure enough by using other methods;
- Make sure the legal limits on noise exposure are not exceeded;
- Provide your employees with information, instruction and training;
- Carry out health surveillance where there is a risk to health.
The Noise Regulations require you to take specific action at certain action values.
These relate to:
- The levels of exposure to noise of your employees averaged over a working day or week; and
- The maximum noise (peak sound pressure) to which employee are exposed in a working day.
Lower exposure action values are:
- A daily or weekly exposure of 80 dB (A- weighted) and;
- A peak sound pressure of 135 dB (C- weighted).
The upper exposure action values are:
- A daily or weekly exposure of 85 dB (A- weighted) and;
- A peak sound pressure of 137 dB(C- weighted).
The levels of noise exposure which must not be exceeded:
- A daily or weekly exposure of 87 dB(A- weighted);
- A peek sound pressure of 140 dB (C- weighted).
These exposure limit values take account of any reduction in exposure provided by hearing protection.
Case Study
The objective of this noise assessment was to identify areas and operations where persons are exposed to noise levels, which may be harmful. This assessment has been undertaken to provide the welding company with sufficient information to comply with The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005.
To determine the noise exposure levels for individuals working in several work places we used personal noise dosimeters and spot measurements.
The subjects were workers employed in 50 different jobs in the welding company. They are different subjects transient to any one area or machine and subjects working at fixed positions. Therefore, the use of personal dosimeters to everyone who was not working at fixed machines was used. Sound level meter was used to subjects working at fixed locations where the sound level meter was positioned to ear worker level.
The equipments were calibrated before use, during and at the end of our assessment. The sound level meter results and the dosimeters results were calculated based on the daily personal noise exposure level, LEP,d, which correspond to LEX, 8h defined in international standard ISO 1999:1990. The total final results showed that different workers were exposed to values higher than the upper exposure action values where some of them experienced peak sound pressure levels higher than 137 dBC.
We evaluated the actual hearing protection used by the welding company; the results showed that this protection provides adequate protection against the higher noise levels measured during our noise assessment.
Between different recommendations clearly and correctly explained in our report we resume the following:
- We recommend the use of hearing protection under the context of a short control until such a time as exposures can be reduced by other means. Employers' general duty is to ensure that the risk of employees to noise is either eliminated at source or, where it is impracticable, the noise levels must be reduced to as low as practicable.
- Hearing protection zones must to be identified using adequate signage.
- It is recommendable used a programme to reduce noise exposure. At this point different suggestion has been incorporated to our report.