Managing occupational noise from blasts

Abstract

The aim of this work is to examine the current best practice for the assessment of auditory hazards associated with occupational impulsive noise for a UK-based test site. A summary of the literature is presented on the measurement methodologies, hearing conservation, and relevant guidance for the selection of hearing protection within the context of near-field impulsive noise. The current U,K. best practice recommends the adapted HML method from Defence Standard 0027:2015 using a C-peak measurement of exposure to compare with the national regulations. On-site measurements were made at the DNV Spadeadam Testing and Research Site (STaR), which performs full-scale high-intensity blast testing. Analyses of the trials data show that the C-peak personnel exposures resulted in acceptable levels below the 140dBCpk limit within the national regulations when using the prescribed hearing protection, according to the adapted HML method. It is concluded that the adapted HML assessment is unclear on how excessive low-frequency content and multiple pressure peaks are accounted for. The implication of this work is that further research is required to improve current best practice to quantify the uncertainties introduced by the additional characteristics found within real impulsive noise exposures.

Managing Environmental Impacts from Blast Noise Sources in the UK

“…An evaluation of the performance of an existing heuristic prediction model, the SSW model from [1], was performed on longitudinal data gathered by the LMN. The model's ability to predict impacts from industrial operations beyond its development scope was presented in [11]. This work found that up to 5 days ahead of testing, the SSW model had root-mean-square errors for receivers at a range of 4-14km of approximately 10dB for EDH and Pad C explosions and approximately 7.5dB for CVE and HYD associated with hazard awareness training.…”

“…A short series of field trials in 2017, known as DABENIM (Development of A Bespoke Environmental Noise Impact Method), identified issues with the accuracy and speed of prediction and highlighted the need to develop new heuristic prediction methods. This led to the most recent and current work [9][10][11] through an industrially-sponsored PhD at Spadeadam, which is expanded upon in section 4.…”