Three out of every four undertakings inspected failed on noise prevention

About 70 per cent of workers in manufacturing industry are troubled by high sound levels. 

Speaking at the Work Environment Riksdag in Stockholm on Friday, Kenth Pettersson, Director-General of the Swedish Work Environment Authority, observed: “Only 450 undertakings out of 1,700 are conducting good enough work environment management to tackle the noise problem. This is not acceptable.” 

As part of their systematic work environment management, employers must investigate, assess and remedy the risks which noise entails. This means measuring daily noise exposure, taking action and drawing up action plans. Employers must inform and train their employees, see to it that hearing protectors are available and, at a certain exposure level, offer hearing tests. 

Current Provisions make it the employer’s duty to engage outside competence – if the requisite knowledge is unavailable in-house – to deal with hazards of the work environment. 600 of the firms inspected were issued with stipulations requiring them to engage the assistance of occupational health services. 

Gyms also inspected 
The inspections formed part of the European Week for Safety and Health at Work, which this year focussed on noise. As an extra initiative the Work Environment Authority has also inspected work involving high sound levels at just over a hundred large gyms in Sweden. employees in the rapidly growing physical fitness sector may risk exposure to noise which can damage their hearing. Just under half the gyms were issued with stipulations requiring them to carry out risk assessments and to ascertain whether noise exposure rises above the level permissible.