01054218

Component

This paper describes how the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has initiated a project to provide noise control technology research information that may lead to the prevention of noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) among construction workers. Part of this research project focused its efforts on identifying noise emission sources from power hand tools used by workers on both commercial and residential construction sites and another element of the project was to develop a searchable web site database of sound power levels for various powered hand tools. The former is the focus of this paper. After source identification, the project was tasked with making recommendations to reduce those noise emissions. Very little research on noise emissions from power hand tools could be found in the literature and this made the project tasks a bit daunting from the outset. There were thousands of power hand tools used by construction workers and the project resources certainly could not be inclusive of that study population. Another resource related obstacle was the scarcity of qualified engineering acousticians to research and reduce noise emissions from the powered hand tools. The author’s experiences as an undergraduate engineer working with industry as part of his engineering studies, and his introduction to INCE in Newport Beach during NOISE-CON 2001 led to the idea of leveraging both NIOSH’s financial and the university’s human resources to examine the large study population of powered hand tools. Some university researchers at that same conference showed a high level of interest in involving themselves in the effort to reduce noise emissions from power hand tools. Having a real world problem to solve, such as power hand tool noise emissions, would compliment a university acoustics or noise control course rather nicely. As is done in many engineering classes, students are given a design or applications project that runs parallel to the typical lectures, homework, and exams given in the course. NIOSH would supply the power hand tool and pay a small fee to cover project costs while the university would provide the engineering acousticians (the students), necessary data acquisition equipment, and deliver to NIOSH their research results in the form of a presentation and small report. Born of necessity, resources were leveraged, and a win-win situation was created both for NIOSH and for the universities.

01054353

English

pp 313-317

2004

Noise-Con 04. The 2004 National Conference on Noise Control Engineering

CD-ROM

References (16) ; Tables (1)

Construction equipment; Construction management; Hearing loss; Machine tools; Noise; Noise barriers; Noise control; Noise sources; Sound level meters; Sound transmission

Construction; Energy; Environment; Highways; I15: Environment

TRIS, TRB

Jul 16 2007 5:38PM