Abstract
Prolonged exposure to airborne ultrasound in a workplace can have a detrimental influence on a worker’s well-being. Given the ever-increasing use of ultrasonic industrial equipment, it is of vital importance—and may also be regulated by law—to monitor ultrasound exposure during a normal workday as part of workplace risk assessment. However, the devices currently utilized exhibit limitations with regard to both their operational frequency and their portability (wearability). In this paper, the first prototype of a high-frequency and ultrasound personal exposimeter is presented in the light of the latest national and international standards governing high-frequency and ultrasonic noise measurement in the field of occupational health monitoring. The prototype was tested in the laboratory environment in order to assess its sound level detection capabilities in both the audible and ultrasonic frequency ranges. Several common industrial scenarios—including an ultrasonic welding machine, an ultrasonic cleaning bath, and a compressed air gun—were simulated in a laboratory environment. For each simulated set-up, a corresponding high-frequency or ultrasonic signal was fed through a specially prepared generation chain. Each experimental scenario was initially surveyed with an ultrasound level meter previously tested up to 100 kHz. This was followed by a measurement with the prototype. For this study, the simulated sound signals varied between 10 kHz and 40 kHz on the frequency scale and between 60 dB and 90 dB in amplitude. The portability of the prototype, which may be required to be worn throughout an entire workday (e.g., 8 h), was also considered. All the experiments were performed on a customized ultrasound measurement set-up within a free-field environment located at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany. Results obtained suggest a good agreement between the measurements performed with both devices in the louder areas of the sound fields produced. Because the overall measurement uncertainty is highly dependent on the specificity of the individual measurement set-up and measurement procedure, an uncertainty budget estimated for the prototype considers electro-acoustical contributions only.
Highlights
With regard to audible sound, strategies for measuring workplace exposure are primarily provided by the ISO 9612:2009 [1] standard
When analyzing the results presented in this work, as well as the outcome of ultrasonic sound field characterization reported by Schöneweiß et al [22], it becomes clear that ultrasonic exposure at a workplace cannot be measured statically
This article reports on the requirements for, development of, and initial tests performed with the prototype of a high frequency and ultrasound personal exposure meter (HiFUSPEx)
Summary
With regard to audible sound, strategies for measuring workplace exposure are primarily provided by the ISO 9612:2009 [1] standard. This standard states that measurements can be performed with either a hand-held sound level meter or a personal sound exposimeter, specifications for which are defined in IEC 61672-1:2013 [2] and IEC 61252:1993 [3], respectively. There are, an increasing number of industrial appliances that produce noise in the high-frequency and ultrasonic range These include machines such as ultrasonic cleaning baths, welding machines, drills, soldering guns, cutting machines, etc., [4,5].
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