Noise and Vibration hazards on Industrial workers - How to avoid or prevent it?

  NOISE AND VIBRATION

 In use in industry today are many new machines that produce high levels of noise and vibration. Excessive noise can damage hearing and can cause pain. The use of protective devices- ear plugs and others-can help prevent discomfort and disability. Vibration, when excessive, can have much the same effect as motion sickness. Excessive vibration may damage the heart, lungs, abdominal organs, and brain. Injuries from overexposure to excessive vibration may not be immediately apparent. Many studies have been made to establish tolerable limits of noise and vibration, both to protect worker health and to make the industrial operation as efficient and productive as possible. There is clearly room for better methods of minimizing both noise and vibration. 

Much has been done in industry and much more remains to be done to make working conditions healthier and safer. Everyone concerned with the problem of occupational disorders-management, workers, doctors, government, and union officials-would do well to consider carefully these statements from the excellent book Medicine, edited by Hugh G. Garland, M.D.: No field of medicine ... offers greater scope for prevention than the industrial medical field. . . . The late Sir Thomas Legge . . . after much practical experience in the field of prevention enumerated the following now famous axioms:

1. Unless and until the employer has done everything-and every- thing means a good deal-the workman can do next to nothing to protect himself, although he is naturally willing enough to do his share.

2. If you can bring an influence to bear external to the workman (i.e., one over which he can exercise no control), you will be successful; and if you cannot or do not, you will never be wholly successful.

3. Practically all industrial lead poisoning is due to the inhalation of dust and fumes; and if you stop their inhalation you will stop the poisoning.

4. All workmen should be told something of the danger of the material with which they come into contact, and not be left to find it out for them- selves-sometimes at the cost of their lives. Although these axioms were based on experience in the lead industry, they have wide applicability.