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.
