Human Vibration Measurement and Evaluation: an Updating

The Vibration Directive 2002/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the exposure of workers to the risks arising from physical agents (vibration) [1] seeks to introduce, at Community level, minimum protection requirements for workers when they are exposed to risks arising from vibrations. Usage is to distinguish Whole-Body Vibration (WBV) transmitted by mobile or fixed machines where the operator is standing or seated from Hand-Arm Vibration (HAV) transmitted by hand held or guided tools. Since its implementation (July 2005) in several European countries, the Vibration Directive results in many questions from employers, hygienists and exposed persons on how to evaluate vibration, what are situations at risks, what are the effects of vibration, how to reduce vibration, how to develop an action plan for prevention. The objective of this contribution consists in providing a summary of the most important conclusions of a survey on human vibration hazard prevention according to the topics presented above. This contribution can be seen as an updating of a previous paper [2] and represents not a comprehensive overview of the situation in all 25 Member States, but rather it deals with the variety of situations to be referred to six of them only, still with a distribution of participants such as to be representative of all the rest of Europe.