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Hand Arm Vibration Testing (HAV)

What is hand-arm vibration?

Hand-arm vibration is vibration transmitted into workers’ hands and arms. This can come from use of hand-held power tools such as grinders, impact wrenches, sanders and drills, hand-guided equipment such as powered lawnmowers and ride on equipment such as mowers & mini diggers.

 

Regular and frequent exposure to hand-arm vibration can lead to two forms of permanent ill health known as: hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS); and carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS).

Symptoms and effects of HAVS & CTS include: tingling and numbness in the fingers which can result in an inability to do fine work or everyday tasks, loss of strength in the hands which might affect the ability to do work safely. The fingers going white & becoming red & painful on recovery, reducing the ability to work in cold or damp conditions, eg outdoors.

As an employer you may need to do to protect your employees from the risk of hand-arm vibration, take practical steps for controlling the risks and understand what you need to do to comply with the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005 (Link to Vibration Regulations?).

What the law says.

The Vibration Regulations require you to:

Make sure risks from vibration are controlled. Provide information, instruction and training to employees on the risk & the actions being taken to control risk; and provide suitable health surveillance.

The Vibration Regulations include an exposure action value (EAV) and an exposure limit value (ELV) based on a combination of the vibration at the grip point(s) on the equipment or work-piece and the time spent gripping it. The exposure action and limit values are:

A daily EAV of 2.5 m/s2 A(8) that represents a clear risk requiring management; and a daily ELV of 5 m/s2 A(8) that represents a high risk above which employees should not be exposed.

How can CES help you monitor HAV?

CES offer a comprehensive HAV testing service. We have the ability to test hand held tools, hand-guided equipment and ride along equipment.

Each piece of equipment is tested to determine the vibration level in terms of the exposure points per hour, time to reach EAV & tame taken to reach ELV.

Unlike other inspections/tests there is no fail result. The test determines how long a tool can be used safely.

The tool is colour code tagged, serial numbered and the results if the tests are interpreted into a certificate for each tool which is located on your online asset database www.mycalibrations.com

Please contact us if you wish to discuss HAV testing requirements.