An overview of industrial employees' exposure to noise in sundry processing and manufacturing industries in Ilorin metropolis, Nigeria.

In this work, an overview of industrial employees' noise exposure level in five selected processing and manufacturing industries in Ilorin are evaluated and compared. Emphasis is given to noise emitted by individual industrial machinery from the selected industries. Event L(Aeq) and LN cycle were studied to identify the noisy machines and to generate baseline data. Findings show that, hammer mill machine from mineral crushing mills produced the highest average noise (98.4 dB(A), electric generator1 (95.6 dB(A) from soft drink bottling industry, electric generator (97.7 dB(A)) from beer brewing and bottling industry, vacuum pump (93.1 dB(A)) from tobacco making industry and electric generator 2 (94.1 dB(A) from mattress making industry. The highest and lowest average noise exposure levels are recorded in mineral crushing mills (93.16 dB(A)) and mattress making industry (84.69 dB(A)) respectively. The study shows that at 95% confidence level, there is significant difference (p<0.05) in noise levels in the industries surveyed. The percentages of machines emit noise above FEPA and OSHA recommendation (90 dB(A)) are: soft drink bottling industry (83.3%), beer brewing and bottling industry (42.9%), tobacco making industry (71.4%), mattress making industry (11.1%) and minerals crushing mills (87.5%). In the past 20 years, the noise levels in soft drink bottling industry reduced by 0.58 dB(A) and that of beer brewing and bottling industry reduced by 9.66 dB(A). But that of mattress making industry increased by 2.69 dB(A). On the average, the noise level in these industries has reduced by 2.52 dB(A). The results of this study show that the noise control measures put in place have significant impact on the noise exposure level in the industries surveyed.