VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL Acoustics - the Dept. of ...

Legislation concerning sound is highly complex matter. There is legislationon various level that often contradicts :Community level (e.g. police regulations).121Regional level (e.g. in Flanders there exists the Vlarem II for communitynuisance).National level (legislation for noise exposure for workers).At the international level (European).Often thescope of applicationis not clear andthe guidelines, noise indicatorsand norms can contradict.In the past few years more and more local legislation is replaced by Europeanregulations. The motivation for this is bipartite :Economical : promote the free traffic of goods in between EU membersstates.Social : protect the EU citizens.In this course we will concentrate on three European noise guidelines :The directive concerning machines in open air.The directive on exposure of workers in industry.The directive for environmental noise.Remark that the directives that are discusses are no laws. Each of themhas to be converted into national legislation by national governments. Thedirective becomes a law from the moment it is published in the national stategazette after conversion.The European guidelines can be downloaded (without charge) from thewebsite http://europa.eu.int. The conversion of the European regulations inthe Belgian legislation can be accessed via the state gazette, where the documentsareavailabledigitally(website:http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/cgi/welcome.pl).