Concepts for promoting the acquisition of quiet machines

摘要

Noise exposure at work places caused by machines is still the major reason for the most important occupational disease in Europe.Although European Directives explicitly require to reduce the noise emission of machines at source and to inform potential purchasers about the remaining risks by providing a noise emission declaration,machines have not significantly become quieter.The reasons are manifold and discussed in this paper.New ideas to foster the concept of using market forces in order to motivate machine manufacturers to design quieter machines and to provide reliable noise emission declarations,will be presented alongside with new approaches to better inform purchasers and to motivate them to apply the noise emission declarations.