Noise Exposure: Action Level Criteria as a Predictor of Permissible Exposure Level Criteria

The adoption of the OSHA noise amendment has made it necessary to make two different noise exposure measurements. These are the employee's exposure with reference to the action level criteria, which requires a threshold of 80 dBA, and the employee's exposure with reference to the permissible exposure limit, which employs a 90 dBA threshold. In addition to the time constraints involved in measuring employee exposure in relation to two different thresholds, many organizations will not have access to equipment capable of performing these separate tasks simultaneously. Based on 242 simultaneous exposure measurements of both the action level and the permissible exposure level criteria, this paper describes a method which uses one noise exposure criteria measurement to predict an employee's exposure at the other.