Tony Woolf Acoustics: Weekly noise exposure calculator
The calculator works out weekly noise exposure or "dose" in accordance with the UK Control of Noise at Work Regulations.
Under the regulations introduced in 2006, you can average an employee's noise exposure over a working week. This calculator allows you to see the effect on the weekly average, of exposure to various average noise levels on different days.
You might first need to work out the average daily exposures, by using the
You can try noise
levels from -99 dB to 999 dB - far greater than a sensible range!
For days not at work, leave the level at 0 dB. For quiet days at work, set the level to a suitable "quiet" value, for example 60 dB. (Empty cells will be automatically set to 60 dB.)
Feel free to experiment!
You will find that giving an employee one or two quiet days out of the five day week will make very little difference to the average, if the other days are noisy. Sorry - this is the way dBs work!
People often worry because their staff work overtime, maybe 48 or even 56 hours in a week. However in practice this does not make a huge difference. The total exposure depends almost entirely on the noisiest days. Try it out!
The answer is given to a tenth of a decibel - this is for educational purposes and it does not imply that differences this small are significant.
This page is offered as an educational aid. The mathematical calculations are carried out by your browser. The result should be correct, but you should not use information in these web pages as a substitute for proper professional advice! Copyright Tony Woolf 2007.