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156 
El MUCH TOUGHER legislation about noise is on the way,
Page 155
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Health and Safety Executive deputy director-general Jim Hammer told a conference organised by the HSE on noise in the workplace. Industry, he said, seems largely unaware of this.
"The European directive on the protection of workers from noise has a deadline of 1 January 1990 for its implementation through regulations in this country," he said "These will make explicit the new obligations on designers and others, and they have little time left to get it right.
"Behind these regulations comes the European Community Machinery Safety Directive with much more specific obligations on designers and suppliers as well as users. For instance, machinery will have to be designed to reduce airborne noise to the lowest level taking account of technical progress and the availability of means of reducing noise, in particular at source.
"There will also be detailed provisions concerning the provision of information about the level of airborne noise emissions from machinery, together with details of the operating conditions of the machine during testing and the methods of measurement.
"HSE believes that it has not yet cracked the problem of awareness. Accordingly it has invited research proposals to study attitudes of managers and employees towards harm resulting from exposure to noise and their perceived need for counter-measures."
Hammer added that HSE's approach is not to rely just on enforcement of the law alone but to combine it with information and advice.