There has been a lot of talk in the media this week regarding whole body vibration in agriculture.
What is it?
Similar to noise exposure, vibration levels are averaged over a working day. In effect there is a level above which action should be taken and also a limit value that must not be exceeded.
The regulations require an assessment of the risk to you or your workforce and to put in place suitable measures to limit exposure. Whilst measuring vibration is complicated, the HSE have produced a guidance document which can help you decide whether the vehicles you are using are likely to be in excess of EU action levels, and also suggests practical measures to help limit exposure (read it here - http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/ais20.pdf).
What do I need to do?
You are probably already addressing a lot of the advice, such as:
- Maintaining equipment in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions
- Maintaining and adjusting seats (especially the damper)
- Limiting speed
- Maintaining roads to fill in potholes
But, in addition, for activities likely to expose workers to larger amounts of vibration you could consider management controls. You might:
- Use different tractors/machinery for different tasks
- Use more modern tractors with suspended cabs for road transport where vibration is likely to be higher.
- Rotate workers between tasks to limit exposure.
- Ask for vibration information when selecting new equipment and selecting equipment that will cause less of a vibration when purchasing.
- Ask you staff if they have any back problems and if someone has back trouble or pain looking at the jobs they do to try to limit vibration as much as possible.
For the very highest levels of vibration exposure you should limit exposure to workers as far as is reasonably practicable. This will also apply to older equipment from July next year.
Is there a time limit on exposure?
For activities producing the very highest levels of vibration, the HSE guidance document on whole body vibration in agriculture gives some guidelines for times at which the limit value is likely to be reached for workers, and therefore when exposure should be limited. These are guideline levels and the length of time can be extended depending on particular circumstances. For example there is a guideline value of 5½ hours for primary cultivation work.
The HSE has said that it does not recognise the 30 minute limit quoted in some press reports, and has said that its own studies using tractors built between 2001- 2005 show that few activities are likely to exceed the limit value during an average working day. You can read the full statement here.
You can read the entire HSE document on Whole Body Vibration here.
NFU position
We see this as one of many EU requirements which could impede upon the competitiveness of UK farmers. We think that the emphasis should be upon machinery manufacturers to design machinery that limits vibration. As responsible operators and employers farmers will use equipment safely and appropriately on a daily basis.
We will be raising the issue with the Business Taskforce on EU Red Tape in the coming weeks as an item of legislation that is impracticable and unenforceable.