Noise Danger To Workers

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 1

Noise Danger To Workers

Permanent and incurable deafness resulted when workers were subjected to excessive noise over long periods, Dr W. I. Glass told a seminar on noise in industry yesterday.

The seminar was held by the Canterbury branch of the National Safety Association, in conjunction with the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Institute of Manage ment. Dr Glass, an industrial medical consultant, said that because the effects were gradual, the dangers were not generally realised. Like cancer from cigarette smoking, it was a long-term hazard. There was an “incubation period” of perhaps 10 years for most cases of occupational deafness The Factories Act was now 23 years out of date, had no

reference at all to noise, and no amendments to recognise that noise was an environmental problem, said Dr Glass. The Workers’ Compensation Act also had no specific reference to deafness, but this was likely to be changed soon. A programme for the conservation of hearing should be started now, he said; and he was supported by Professor D. C. Stevenson, of the chair of mechanical engineering at Canterbury University. Professor Stevenson said that one Australian company had claims amounting to more than 32 million lodged against it for occupational

deafness. He had taken noise readings in a factory where claims had been made, and had been asked not to take his instruments into some parts of the factory, even though the noise level was obviously excessive there, because no claims had

yet been made by workers from those areas.

This was an example of the ostrich syndrome—of management thinking that if it ignored a problem it would go away, said Professor Stevenson.

Noise, he said, came from the vibration of surfaces, and often this could easily be reduced. A machine tool might be badly mounted, and the noise might even be coming from the floor around it. Sometimes it was possible to reduce the vibration by “interrupting" the surface, and this was why fitters would put a G-elamp on a surface they were working.

Some noises were difficult to reduce, but others could be brought below the safe level in quite simple ways, said Professor Stevenson, and he held up a cylinder three inches long which dampens the noise of tools with air hiss. Dr Glass and Professor Ste-

venson both said that much noise could be eliminated at the design stage. “Machines just don’t function without men,” said Dr Glass. “If we don't start considering the operators as well as the machines we are going to have a lot of labour problems. If the designers were concerned about the conditions of the workers, many problems could be solved on the drawing boards.” Addressing the industrialists at the seminar, he said: “If you have to shout to your foreman to hear, you don’t have to call in an expert to know you’ve got a noise problem.”

Where the noise level could not be reduced to safe levels, the workers should be supplied with ear plugs or muffs, he said. Of the two, muffs were preferable for a number of reasons, including the fact that foremen could easily see if they were being worn.