ABSTRACT
UNLABELLED: In European Union every day millions of employees are exposed to noise at work and the risk this can entail. AIM: this study presents the sound spectrum in Iasi heavy industry: metal foundries industry, punching and embossing of metal sheets, cold and hot metal processing. MATERIAL AND METHODS: it was used a type 2 Sound Level Meter (SLM) and the considered value was the average value over 10 test values in 10 consecutive days for each octave band in common audible frequency range. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS: It is obviously that the large values of sound intensities in the most of frequency octave band exceed maximum admissible and legal values. CONCLUSIONS: The study reveals the necessity of hardware, medical and managerial measures in order to reduce the occupational noise and to prevent the hearing acuity damage of the workers.
Subject(s)
Auditory Fatigue , Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced/prevention & control , Industry , Noise, Occupational/adverse effects , Occupational Diseases/prevention & control , Audiometry, Pure-Tone , Humans , Risk Factors , RomaniaABSTRACT
Nowadays 7% of Europe's workers suffer from work related hearing difficulties and noise induced hearing loss is among the most commonly reported occupational diseases in the E.U. In this situation the occupational health physician has to evaluate the noise level especially in industrial environment in order to help the patients and the employers to prevent the noise irreversible health damages. This material presents two simple algorithms to be used to calculate the resulting noise level when composing noise sources. Personal contributions.
Subject(s)
Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced/epidemiology , Noise, Occupational/adverse effects , Occupational Diseases/epidemiology , Occupational Health Services , Algorithms , Audiometry, Pure-Tone , Auditory Threshold , European Union , Health Surveys , Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced/prevention & control , Humans , Occupational Diseases/prevention & control , Practice Guidelines as Topic , Risk Factors , Romania/epidemiologyABSTRACT
Every day, millions of employees are exposed to noise at work and at the risks this can entail. While the noise is most obviously in industries such as manufacturing and construction, it can also be an issue in a wide range of other working environments. One in five workers have to raise their voice to be heard for at least half of the time when they are at work. This paper shortly presents the physical aspects of the noise and its dangerous local level effects on the human body.
