NIOSH Noise Exposure Data By Type Of Job

The source of data is provided by The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), whose mission is to develop new knowledge in the field of occupational safety and health and to transfer that knowledge into practice.

Health hazards evaluations (HHEs) are requested by employees, their representatives or employers, to help learn whether health hazards are present at their workplace. The scope of HHEs varies based on the requestors’ concerns and the NIOSH project officers’ professional judgment. Only noise measurement results are included in this database; however, many HHEs include evaluation of exposures other than noise. It also includes the following information: U.S. state or territory; National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) sector; facility description; type of dosimeter or sound level meter used; whether a hearing conservation program was in place; whether a hearing protection was used; whether octave band data was collected; job title; noise-generating activities; location of noise measurements; start and end date for site visit; type (full-shift, partial-shift, or task-based) and duration of noise measurement; type of noise (continuous, impulsive, or intermittent); exposure to ototoxic chemicals; and results in decibel A-weighted (dBA) and percent dose according to OSHA and NIOSH noise measurement criteria. This dataset is an ongoing project and will be updated at least yearly to add the most recent HHE noise measurement data.

All noise measurements were collected by NIOSH investigators as part of a health hazard evaluation. Data were extracted from the final report and, in some cases, augmented from investigator’s records. Administrative and observational information was extracted from the final report. The Health Hazard Evaluation Program has an extensive internal review process for its reports. Data entered into the database underwent a 10 percent random check to ensure accurate entry.

For noise exposure monitoring, NIOSH investigators used noise integrating dosimeters (Type 2). Dosimeters were typically set up to simultaneously integrate noise using three different criteria to compare noise measurement results with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit, the OSHA action level (AL), and NIOSH recommended exposure limit (REL). For area noise measurements and octave band noise frequency measurements, NIOSH investigators used integrating sound level meters (Type 1 or Type 2) and octave band noise frequency analyzers.

Because data related to measurements results in some cases were reported as singular or as interval of values (for the same variable), the lower and upper interval limits were placed in distinct fields (columns), along with singular values in each of the two fields. At the same time, in order to ensure the possibility to determine which of the values were reported as interval, a field that signals this aspect has been created.