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New Noise at Work Regulations, Will You be Ready? The current Noise at Work Regulations are due to be replaced in February 2006. "A long way off," some may say, but will you be ready, or are you currently performing noise surveys which will become redundant in just over 2 years? The following article describes the history so far and the changes to expect. In 1993 a proposal sought to establish a new framework for the regulation of physical agents at work applying initially to noise, vibration, optical radiation and non-optical electromagnetic fields. In 1999 the German Presidency put forward a revised proposal limiting the scope of the Directive to vibration (hand-arm and whole body) with the intention of developing further Directives on the other physical agents sequentially rather than in a single Directive. The UK supported this decision to deal with the physical agents sequentially rather than as a single Directive. Following on from the political agreement on the Vibration Directive in November 2000, the Swedish Presidency introduced a proposal for a Noise Directive in January 2001. This would repeal the existing 1986 Noise Directive (86/188/EEC), implemented in the UK by the Noise at Work Regulations 1989. The main changes in the Swedish proposal to
the 1986 Directive were:
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