Hand/Arm Vibration
MONITOR & MANAGE
When it comes to effective HAV management, is technology the best route to compliance, ask the experts at Ideagen Reactec.
Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS) remains a serious occupational health disease despite two decades of legislation. Employers have a legal duty under the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005 to manage their employees’ exposure to hand-arm vibration. If assessments show that daily exposure could exceed the action value as defined in the regulations, employers must take steps to reduce that risk as low as reasonably practicable.
Compliance with these regulations is mandatory, but achieving or demonstrating compliance is not as straightforward. The effective control and management of HAV exposure risk is undoubtedly dependent on realistic and appropriate assessment of the risk.
UNDERSTANDING WORKPLACE EXPOSURE
https://www.hse.gov.uk/vibration/hav/calculator-guide.htm
Effective HAV management starts with understanding how exposure occurs in the workplace. Quantification of the risk is well defined and an HSE tool is available which combines the duration of exposure with the vibration magnitude level considered representative of the work undertaken. There are many simple ways to determine the duration of exposure to vibration, but
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accurately assessing the magnitude (or intensity) of that exposure is a challenge.
The vibration level emitted by any tool during use can change dramatically depending on many factors: tool condition, the material being worked, the tool accessory’s condition, the skill level of the worker using the tool and fundamentally, if the tool is right for the job. With so many variables at play, it’s no surprise that with something as simple as an impact drill, the range of vibration magnitude possible in normal use, from minimum to maximum, can vary by a factor of three. This is without considering inappropriate or unskillful use of the tool.
You might think this means the risk assessment could be wrong by a factor of three, but the risk assessment calculation is not linear. The actual impact on risk is a factor of nine. So, while your assessment might suggest an operation is under the regulation’s EAV, in reality, it could be above the legal exposure limit.
There are several approaches to identifying a representative vibration magnitude.
Use of manufacturer’s data: Regulations also require that manufacturers of handheld tools declare a vibration magnitude for their tool, which is easily found online. However, to ensure that all manufactures declare this information consistently, there are strict standards for these measurements to be undertaken in laboratory conditions. For many tools, unfortunately, the laboratory conditions do not reflect worker’s real-world use of the tools. Dependency on manufacturer’s declared data alone carries a high risk of a non-compliant risk assessment.
WWW.TOMORROWSHS.COM
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