scope:

This document gives guidelines for estimating and documenting the daily vibration exposure due to the use of hand-held power tools and hand-guided machines, in relation to the requirements of the European Physical Agents Directive (vibration) 2002/44/EC. This document is addressed to competent services for the assessment of vibration exposure at the workplace and to national authorities and industrial organizations.

The methods in this document are based on the requirements and guidance given in EN ISO 5349-1 and EN ISO 5349-2 but instead of measuring the vibration magnitudes at the specific workplaces, the methods in this document use existing vibration values from other sources of information including those provided by the manufacturers of the machinery in relation to the requirements of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC.

This document gives guidance on how to estimate the exposure time and the daily vibration exposure A(8) as defined in EN ISO 5349-1. It also offers a simple method for estimating the daily vibration exposure by means of a table which indicates the vibration exposure as a function of the equivalent vibration total value and the associated exposure time. Both methods can be used even in cases of multiple exposures on the same day.