An assessment of occupational exposure to noise in western European oil refineries

Report no. 90/53: This report summarizes personal noise exposure measurements,collected for workers in Western European oil refineries.

The data are collated by different refinery process operations and offsite activities, and the 1982-84 and the 1985-88 data are separated for comparison. It is concluded that noise exposure was lower in 1985-88 than 1982-84. However, many noise exposures still exceed specified action levels in the EC Noise Directive (86/188/EEC) a t which the implementation of effective hearing conservation programmes is required.