News/Posts/Events

Misunderstanding Hand Arm Vibration monitoring marketing material can put hands and safety policies at risk. Caveat emptor.

The availability of this new test will have a dramatic effect on the management of hearing loss prevention programmes…

This is one of a number of highly rated, interactive and practical noise related workshops developed for Environmental Health Officers. They are held locally by a host authority, saving on travel, time – and at a fraction of the cost of conventional training. It can even be a profitable exercise…

A simple way to cope with mobile plant and tools.

INVC recognised at the UK Energy Innovation Awards

International Occupational Hygiene Association (IOHA) Conference Paper: 27th April 2015: Peter Wilson: INVC Technical Director

CIEH 2014 conference paper highlights the woeful ignorance and performance of the industry…
The paper given by Peter Wilson (INVC technical director) illustrated that a very large proportion of the environmental “noise industry” is woefully ignorant both of the proper diagnostic techniques and of modern noise control methods. Consequently, thousands of people are needlessly exposed to stressful noise over very prolonged periods. This results in unnecessary deaths from stress as highlighted in the recent BMJ and WHO reports (see “Stressed to death by noise” post).

We all know that noise can be stressful – and that there is an ever increasing level that seeps into and through our lives like rising flood water. However, a study published this month in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) provides yet more evidence that environmental noise isn’t just pervasive and annoying, but that it is a serious health hazard that kills thousands of people a year in the UK.

An article about the application of our Quiet Fan technology (QFt) to reduce the noise from large fans feeding stacks in the power station industry has been published in Power Engineering International. The journalist suggests that the widespread adoption of the technology in this industry could reduce both capital and running costs very substantially compared with conventional fan silencing techniques – i.e. traditional attenuators, acoustic lagging and enclosures.

He uses the example of the 50MW Schiller biomass power station noise in the USA (the largest station of its kind) where the massive 2 storey ID fan feeding the stack (shown below) was modified in only 12 hours (that’s not a misprint – just 12 hours from noisy to quiet) to reduce the fan noise by 10dB at fraction of the cost and with a much lower power consumption compared with the conventional fan noise attenuator previously fitted.

Doesn’t the term “Acoustic Shock” sound nasty? If you renamed it “unexpected somewhat louder headset noise than usual that is still at only a tiny fraction of the noise level that is deemed to cause hearing damage in industry”, it wouldn’t sound so bad.

We are presenting case studies at the joint HSE / IOA conference at Nottingham on 5th March that illustrate the cost savings and competitive advantages of both specifying and developing quiet plant and equipment.

If you play white noise to a group of people and tell them that the song “White Christmas” is hidden in the sound, about 30% of them will be convinced that they can hear it. The human mind is always looking for patterns – even when they aren’t there.

Have you noticed that the PPE manufacturers are rushing out new devices – “now with added less protection” – for lower levels of noise exposure and for the entertainment industry?

Noise is stressful and can damage your health – particularly if you show up at 3am to an all-night party asking them to turn the noise down… New evidence collected by the World Health Organisation indicates that c 3% of deaths from heart disease is attributable to long term exposure to environmental noise – mainly nighttime noise exposure, with 2% of the population suffering from severe sleep disturbance, 15% from serious annoyance and with additional significant effects on the learning abilities of children. As noise complaints in the UK have increased by a factor of 5 over 20 years, this indicates that the problem of LOUD NOISE is rapidly getting worse.

… as long as the “noise” is music. Thus spake Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail earlier this year – he’s a journalist, for some value of “journalist”. “Blessed is the man who, being ignorant, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact” (with apologies to George Eliot). This journalistic licence is addictive, I feel better already…