User Guide

Plantronics Acoustic Safety White Paper

Draft #4

Plantronics Acoustic Safety

White Paper

IN EUROPEAN UNION: THE NOISE AT WORK DIRECTIVE

The EU’s Noise at Work Directive establishes its rules for protecting hearing in the workplace. It

addresses two sources of noise-induced hearing damage: acoustic shock and excessive noise

exposure throughout a working day.

• Protection against acoustic shock from peak sound pressure: The Directive sets limits to

three levels, summarized in Table 1.

– The lower exposure action level of peak sound pressure is 135 dB. When noise exposure

exceeds this level, employers are required to assess the risk to workers’ health, provide

employees information and training, and make hearing protection device available

to them.

– The upper exposure action value is 137 dB. When noise exposure exceeds this level,

employees are required to wear hearing protection devices.

– The exposure limit value is 140 dB. Employees shall not be exposed to noise at or

above this level.

• Protection against daily noise exposure: Similar to OSHA’s time-weighted-average, the

Directive also deﬁnes three levels of noise that an employee may typically be exposed to

during an average day or week .

– The lower exposure action level is 80 dBA. See the preceding section for lower and

upper exposure action levels.

– The upper exposure action level is 85 dBA.

– The exposure limit value of daily noise exposure is 87 dBA.

Approximately half a second. By comparison, the blink of an eye is about 300 milliseconds.

dBA stands for dB A-weighted sound pressure level. Its formal expression is dBSPL(A). The A-weighting relates to how

human respond to noise, both from the viewpoint of hearing damage and annoyance.