The results show that tool vibration emission is potentially an unreliable method of assessing in-use tool vibration exposure as it fails to capture the effects that different operative posture and operative skill have on the human response. This may contribute to uncertainty relating to the assessment of risk when based upon a point in time tool vibration magnitude. Such uncertainty is likely to contribute to the continuing reporting of injury and illness associated with excessive and inadequately controlled vibration exposure.
Professor Setsuo Maeda, Faculty of Applied Sociology, Kindai University, Japan lead the research which evaluated the relationship between vibration magnitude measurement on subjects using wearable sensors with temporary threshold shift (TTS) in vibrotactile perception while evaluating and comparing with the same assessment of the on tool measured vibration magnitude and TTS. The research was funded by the Scottish Funding Council and facilitated by Dr Mark Taylor's team at Edinburgh Napier University's School of Engineering and the Built Environment.
Leif Anderson CTO, Reactec, who also contributed to the paper stated "This research demonstrates the direct relationship between the human response to vibration and the risk assessed by HAVwear, a wearable devise, opening the opportunity for a more straightforward assessment of risk and the development of controls. The practice of work environment controls based upon a point in time laboratory (or even work place) tool emission test data does not capture the possible range of work-face variables that contribute to operative vibration exposure. The more realistic an assessment of risk the more likely that risk can be managed effectively and an individual's potential for developing this debilitating disease eradicated".
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