Industrial
This situation classically is thought to involve primarily manufacturing settings where industrial machinery produces intense sound levels, not uncommonly in the 75 to 85 decibel range. While this circumstance is the most dramatic, there are many other office type environments where sound levels may lie in the range of 70 to 75 decibels, entirely composed of office equipment, music, public address systems, and even exterior noise intrusion. The latter environments can also produce noise health effects provided that exposures are long term.
In the case of industrial equipment, the most common techniques for noise protection of workers consist of shock mounting source equipment, creation of acrylic glass or other solid barriers, and provision of ear protection equipment. In certain cases the machinery itself can be re-designed to operate in a manner less prone to produce grating, grinding, frictional, or other motions that induce sound emissions.
In the case of more conventional office environments, the techniques in architectural acoustics discussed above may apply. Other solutions may involve researching the quietest models of office equipment, particularly printers and photocopy machines. One source of annoying, if not loud, sound level emissions are lighting fixtures (notably older fluorescent globes). These fixtures can be retrofitted or analyzed to see whether over-illumination is present, a common office environment issue. If over-illumination is occurring, de-lamping or reduced light bank usage may apply.
Read more about this topic: Noise Mitigation
Famous quotes containing the word industrial:
“The Enormous Room seems to me to be the book that has nearest approached the mood of reckless adventure in which men will reach the white heat of imagination needed to fuse the soggy disjointed complexity of the industrial life about us into seething fluid of creation. There can be no more playing safe.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.”
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
“The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other ...”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)