Noise Assessment and Training

If noise is becoming a problem in your workplace, it's part of the company's legal obligation to complete a noise assessment to remove, reduce or control the exposure.

Arco's Hearing Technical Specialist can visit your site to advise on noise hazards and hearing protection: assessing your site-specific needs and recommending the most suitable solution.

Arco Professional Safety Services

Our Arco Professional Safety Services team are dedicated to helping you achieve and maintain full health, safety and environmental compliance. With their breadth of knowledge, industrial and technical experience plus a sensible risk management approach they provide realistic and practical solutions to resolve problematic issues with clear and simple advice.

It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure the company complies with the The General Application Regulations 2007, Chapter 1 of Part 5: Control of Noise at Work.

The Regulations require you as an employer to:

• Assess the risks to your employees from noise at work
• Take action to reduce the noise exposure that produces those risks
• Provide your employees with hearing protection if you cannot reduce the noise exposure enough by using other methods
• Make sure the legal limits on noise exposure are note exceeded
• Provide your employees with information, instruction and training
• Carry out health surveillance where there is a risk to health

Our services will allow you to:

• Identify whether employees are exposed to noise at or above the exposure limit and action values and/or peak sounds pressure levels
• Identify areas and/or machines which give rises to noise levels at or above

We will visit your site and undertake a noise assessment of appropriate areas, processes and operator exposure, gathering data and information on current operational practices, to assess and recommend appropriate control strategies. In addition to process-based site surveys, environmental surveys of sites can also be undertaken to provide information and feedback on general background noise and noise exposure to neighbours and members of the public.

Noise measurements can be collected using either sound meters or personal dose badges, or a combination of both.

We have a range of dose badges that can be attached to an individual or fixed in numerous locations around a site. The dose badge records the noise ratings over a set time and charts the time and total of the noise exposure and calculates an average exposure rating.

Again, from this we can recommend control measures and the level of SNR protection rating to give the correct level of hearing protection.

Our Noise Awareness online course provides employees with an awareness of the dangers from excessive exposure to noise, the actions they can take to control the risk and how noise can be controlled.

We can help to roll out hearing protection where necessary and provide samples for trial and wearer training.

Hearing protection is essential; however, a one size fits all approach, whilst satisfying industry regulations, does not guarantee effectiveness. Ear-fit testing is the only way to ensure that hearing protection does its job optimally.

The SNR is commonly mistaken as representing the real-world performance of a hearing protection device without accounting for the individual and environmental factors that affect it.

Fit testing highlights the importance of actual protection achieved by a hearing protection device fitted by the user in the workplace setting and helps identify training needs.

At Arco we can help supply a range of fit validation systems for your own use or visit you on-site to carry out testing with the 3M E-A-R fit validation system for users of 3M hearing protection.

For more information or to discuss your requirements get in touch today.

View our comprehensive range of hearing protection products including earplugs, ear defenders and communication solutions.