What are the risks from vibration?
Vibration risks come from many sources including hand-held power tools such as grinders or road breakers and hand-guided equipment such as pedestrian controlled floor saws.
Vibration is transmitted into your hands and arms when using hand held / operated tools and machinery. Excessive exposure can affect the nerves, blood vessels, muscles and joints of the hand, wrist and arm causing Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS). Construction workers are particularly at risk because of the work they do and the equipment they use such as concrete breakers, pokers and compactors, sanders, grinders and disc cutters, hammer drills, chipping hammers, chainsaws and needle guns.
Under the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005 it states you must prevent or reduce risks from exposure to vibration at work. This is exposure to vibration when using hand held or operated tools and machinery which can lead to permanent injury of the hands and arms.
Assess the risk
Identify and assess: Construction sites have a range of different activities involving vibrating tools and machinery. Consider:
Who – think about your employees and contractors. What equipment are they using?
What – estimate or assess likely exposures from the tasks you are doing.
Where – consider where the work is taking place.
Control the risk
Where the risks are judged to be low, simple and inexpensive controls will suffice. For higher risks, you will have to do much more to protect workers. Give priority to the greatest risks first.
During one our routine inspections, we identified contractors/employees digging holes in a concrete floor using a jack hammer. They were asked how they were managing the vibration risks in which they explained by rotating between each other every 20 minutes. After assessing the risk , it was identified that this process was found to be time consuming.
By controlling the risk, we suggested to use a mini digger with a hammer point eliminating the vibration to the contractors altogether. The costs of hiring the digger outweighs the risks from vibration and also providing time efficiency on contractors/employees’ wages.
It highlights that safety can often reduce risks and also reduce company costs by just spending that little bit more time by assessing the risk looking at whether there is a better, safer way of doing completing the task.
Sources of information:
https://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/healthrisks/physical-ill-health-risks/vibration.htm