Browsing: Noise | Page 7

An Australian study has found employees who work in a new "active design building" spend less time sitting and have less lower back pain, but are more concerned by noise levels.

The Federal Court has upheld a finding that office hubbub aggravated a worker's oversensitivity to everyday sounds.

• Court blames injured worker for toxic environment; and
  
• Link found between work noise and coronary heart disease.

• Register now for this week's health and wellbeing webinar;
  
• Employers and OHS managers invited to self-assess workplace safety; and
  
• Regulator prosecutes unsafe employer and targets noisy workplaces.

Working in a "busy and quite noisy" office contributed to a worker developing a permanent sensitivity to "normal" everyday sounds, the AAT has found, in upholding her workers' compensation appeal.

Exposure to traffic noise increases the risk of abdominal obesity, European researchers have found. They say people exposed to multiple noise sources are at particularly high risk of increasing waist sizes, and noise could cause a range of other health problems.

Workers with hand-arm vibration syndrome who are exposed to workplace noise suffer greater hearing loss than workers who are exposed to noise but don't have the syndrome, Canadian researchers have found.

Employers are being urged to apply higher-order hazard controls wherever practicable, after a new Safe Work Australia report found that more than three in five workers are regularly exposed to multiple hazards associated with occupational diseases.

A new paper from the Northern Territory has questioned whether the costs of the model WHS legislation's provisions on principal contractors and audiometric testing outweigh the benefits.

Rio Tinto's safety performance in 2013 was "disappointing", its latest sustainability report shows, but the global mining and metals company explains how one site transformed its safety performance, and what it's doing to reduce exposure to noise.