Managing Noise Pollution in Mining Industry

Safety and Risk
Management
Presented By:

Introduction
 Noise pollution is referred as
disturbance sound that which
can led to hearing impairment,
work inefficiency, distractions,
and/or accidents.
 With major mines in Australia
being constructed around
populated area, they have
significant impact on the health
concerns of the public due to the
increase in noise concerns and
loss of hearing of young age
population (Morrice and
Colagiuri, 2013).

Effect of Occupational Noise Pollution on
Workers
 Noise is characterized to have many negative effects on workers,
this includes;
 Poor performance rate due to a lowering of concentration,
 Increased fatigue due to the long exposure of noise,
 Work interference due to the poor communication,
 And, increase in health cases of impaired hearing (Pokhrel &
Dubey, 2013).

Measuring Noise Exposure
 Effective determination of noise exposure can be mainly achieved
through the occupational noise management procedure in
AS/NZS 1269.1,
 Generally, measuring noise exposure is done to determine
approaches of handling noise which could led to health issues of
workers and the public (Dontala, Reddy, & Vadde, 2015).
 In order to be compliance with the specified regulations, personal
hearing protectors which workers may be wearing during the
calculation of the noise should not be taken into consideration.

Action Level for Noise
 Normally, when people are exposed to determined noise there are
various actions that should be taken.
 The average noise is determined to about 85 dB(A) where the
maximum peak noise is about 140 dB(lin) (Morrice and
Colagiuri, 2013).
 For an average noise, the maximum working hours a day are
approximately 8 hours i.e. the worker’s exposure should remain
at (LAeq,8h).
 With this guides, any company or mining management is
expected to adopt strategies of limiting noise exposure below the
average limit.

Legislative and Regulatory Requirements
 One of the requirement of the Mine Safety and Inspection Regulation
is the general application of engineering procedures to curb hazardous
issues.
 However, in the event where the elimination of noise is impartibly
impossible, safety gears should be applied (Shen, Muduli, & Barve,
2015).
 Safety gears are not considered as possible solutions to noise while
they are just for short period of time before engineering solution are
identified in minimizing noise in the mining grounds.