Loud Workplaces Bad For Your Health

Post Reply New Topic

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health ... csp=34news

Something maybe us noise sensitive people have known for a while...

My office is always noisy. Ceiling tiles rattling, my desk vibrating, whooshing air conditioning, whine from the computers, buzzing AC compressor on the roof (causing the rattling and vibrating), nearby warehouse, and my co-workers constantly yapping with each other or on the phone. One putz was listening to the radio without headphones. This went on for a YEAR despite my objections. He eventually got fired for other reasons.

It drives me nuts. I can't wait to get out of there.

When I worked for a shipping company, the building was extremely hot or cold, depending on the season. It was also very loud with conveyor belts everywhere, slides and chutes with boxes slamming on them, loud buzzers going on and off signaling a clear belt to be restarted. When the belts got too much weight on them, they'd start screeching very loudly, you could hear it on the other side of the building, because the belts stretched three football fields away from the unload to the load. Sometimes belts came off track from the rollers that turned them and they'd start screaming from that and made a lot of noise around the 10,000 Hz range, which made me and others physically sick. The fan's used to cool down the building were very loud, and supposedly had a decibel level loud enough that OSHA could intervene. A guy whose job it was to make sure the labeling on the package was correct, had to stand under the fans to do his job. He complained about it, but retracted his complaint when he was told the only remedy was to take out all of the fans in the building.