Industrial Safety: High Pressure Noise Level

One resident engineer openly said that he did not want to see accident reports documented because he wanted to show the number of accidents in his yard as zero for the whole year. Quite surprisingly, he was able to cover up all the accidents. No wonder there were cases where the corpses of illegal foreign workers were reported.

The safety officer must report directly to a government body and not to the resident engineer (RE), because the RE can bias against the Safety officer since the RE may enjoy substantial benefits from the contractor like getting free lifts every day from house to office and vice versa. Other benefits are normally the payment of the house rents, the laundry bills and the bills from restaurant. At the moment, in many Asian countries most safety officers only appear on paper. They are actually people who are doing something else for the employers.

The next incident I had to solve was people working  in enclosed areas where the noise level was dB(A) 88 or above all the time. These workers had to work 12 hours per day, six days per week. Without using the earmuffs or earplugs, people would start to lose their hearing capability within a few weeks. It had been confirmed that a decibel level of 90 or more continuously for 8 hours would damage the hearing system slightly on a permanent basis. The decibel level from live rock music is 120, the same from power tools like those  use to hack concrete,  when three hackers are operating at the same time. For chain saw, it is 110 and for normal office conversation, 60.

When they found out it was always too late. All workers who have to work in high Sound Pressure Level area, dB(A) 85 and above, must be briefed on the hazards of noise exposure. I also came across workers in these areas not willing to put on the earmuffs provided, giving the excuse the earmuffs would make them sweat more profusely. They also cited that they worked for many weeks there and non-of them had hearing problem.

Noise level must be maintained below 65 dBA during the day time. The use of noise buffers such as hoarding must be encouraged. Noise level must not exceed 55 dBA during night time if the workers are sleeping near the construction yards.

If a worker must be exposed to a location where the noise level is 80 dBA or higher, for more than one hour, protective earmuffs must be worn. A sound level of 120 or more could cause a fatal heart attack.