what the law says

The Control Of Vibration At Work Regulations 2005 are designed to protect persons against risk to their health and safety arising from exposure to vibration at work. The regulations came into effect on 6 July 2005 (except for transitional arrangements for existing equipment and for whole body vibrations in the agriculture and forestry sectors).

They cover hand-arm vibration (HAV) and whole body vibration (WBV), with two exposure values specified for each, expressed in units of acceleration (m/s² A(8)), as shown in the table below. Although the values are shown in the same units, they are measured in different ways.

Under the regulations, you have a duty to your employees, and others who may be affected, to:

• eliminate exposure to vibration where reasonably practicable;
• where exposure cannot reasonably be eliminated, it should be reduced so far as is reasonably practicable, but at least to below the appropriate daily exposure limit value in the table;
• assess the risks to the health and safety of exposed employees and identify the measures needed to meet the regulations;
• provide health surveillance for employees where their health and safety may be at risk from exposure to vibration or where they may be exposed to levels above an exposure action value (see below); and
• provide information, instruction and training for employees where their health and safety may be at risk from exposure to vibration or where they may be exposed to levels above an exposure action value.

Training should be provided on the following as described in the Guidance Hand-arm vibration L140:

• organisational and technical measures required in order to comply with the requirements of regulation 6 (entitled Elimination or control of exposure);
• exposure limit values and action values set out in regulation 4 (which details these values);
• significant findings of the risk assessment, including any measurements taken, with an explanation of those findings;
• why and how to detect and report signs of injury;
• entitlement to appropriate health surveillance under regulation 7 (which details health surveillance requirements) and its purposes;
• safe working practices to minimise exposure to vibration; and
• the collective results of any health surveillance undertaken in accordance with regulation 7 (which details health surveillance requirements) in a form calculated to prevent those results from being identified as relating to a particular person.

You should consult with your safety or employee representative on your proposals for training and information.

HSE guidance

There is considerable guidance on the HSE website, including some typical vibration magnitudes for various items of work equipment measured by the HSE under practical working conditions.

There are also several helpful HSE publications:

• L140 Hand-Arm Vibration ACoP.
• L141 Whole-Body Vibration ACoP.
• HSE guidance document HSG170 Vibration Solutions.
• HSE booklet Control the risks from Hand-Arm vibration INDG175.

Most of the information available relates to hand-arm vibration as this is a well known condition, dating back to 1911. There are definite links between measurable exposure and the onset of symptoms for vibration white finger.

For VWF, a ‘date of guilty knowledge’ has been set by the High Court as 1 January 1975. Before this date, given the knowledge and technology available to them, employers would not be expected to be aware of the risks of exposure. However, after this date, employers should have been aware of the risks and should have taken steps to protect their employees from the harmful effects of vibration.