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 Employers guide to Vibration
5/3/2007
According to the HSE Around five million workers are exposed to hand-arm vibration in the workplace. Two million of these workers are exposed to levels of vibration where there is a clear risk of developing disease. Currently 3,000 new claims are made every year for Industrial Injury Disablement Benefit in relation to vibration related illnesses.
You the employer are responsible for assessing, identifying and reducing and eliminating vibration risk of exposure at work.
We have compiled a brief 5 step guide to help employers review your workplace Hand Arm Vibration and Whole Body Vibration risks of exposure
1. Do you operate the following machinery in your workplace?
Concrete breakers, peckers
Sanders, jigsaws, spiral saws, angle grinders, drills, staplers, rivet guns
Chipping and demolition hammers
Chainsaws, brush cutters, strimmers, hedge trimmers, lawn mowers
Scabblers or needle guns.
Material feed machines including bench grinders, bandsaws, table saws.
Hammers, all varieties.
2. If you use vibration emitting machinery, make a list of all tools used and their duration of use for each piece of equipment?
Compare these to the exposure action levels and exposure vibration limit The HSE website has a calculator for daily vibration exposure limits
http://www.hse.gov.uk/vibration/hav/readyreckoner.htm
3. Assess the exposure to vibration from the equipment used:
Consider elimination of the hazardous tool by process design or new purchase. E.g. can grinding time be reduced or made more compatible to use two-handled tools that will reduce overall vibration.
In the long-term consider the use of alternative tools that generate lower vibration levels, due to the nature of the tool or simply because they are new tools, in order to reduce vibration levels received by staff.
Carry out regular maintenance on tools to ensure their performance is optimised and vibration is therefore minimised. When choosing new equipment adopt a policy of purchasing low vibration tools.
In the short-term comprehensive instruction and training should be conducted to ensure that operative rotation of activities is carried out to ensure optimum vibration control by limiting time spent on the activity.
Train staff to hold the tools with a light but safe grip if possible.
Provide suitable thermal protection for operatives exposed to vibration whilst working in potentially cold areas i.e. outside or in the workshop.
4. Where required, ensure that:
Control measures to reduce vibration are properly applied and
You provide information, training and when necessary undertake health surveillance.
5. Rule of thumb that where the HAV risks are low, the actions you take may be simple and inexpensive. But where the risks are high, you should control exposure. Review what you are doing to ensure that a change in how you work also assesses varying exposure to vibration.
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