An-Najah Staff

Noise pollution is becoming more and more important, especially in the industrialized and developed countries. Industrial noise is a serious environmental problem, which causes annoyance and disruption to daily activities. In the West Bank, however, there are so far no regulatory laws to limit high industrial noise levels. Due to a general lack of awareness about the ill effects of high noise levels, the owners of factories pay little attention to safety measures for their workers. Accordingly, this study is concerned with measuring the equivalent noise levels L_eq in 38 factories in Nablus city and comparison with international standards of noise. The obtained mean value of these levels is 85.5 dB(A). It has been found that the L_eq values for 40% of the selected factories are higher than the widely-adopted international standards. These factories are considered by the workers to be noisy sources. The continuous exposure of the workers to such high noise levels can cause hearing damage, speech masking and annoyance. High-level noise not only hinders communication between workers, but depending upon the level, quality and exposure duration of the noise, it may also result in different types of physical, physiological and psychological disorders. This study makes some recommendations and gives advice for the workers in the factories, owners of factories and for the Palestinian authorities, to relieve the noise pollution problem in factories in Nablus City.