Posted By Peter Rees Can anyone help? I need to assess two areas within my company for lighting levels:- 1. Warehouse distribution area where FLTs operate, and 2. Area that has operating machinery (and therefore operators) within it. The machinery here includes high-speed moving machinery and an industrial oven. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what are the required lighting levels, and also how to measure them? I don't want to commission an expensive consultant (unless I have to) and wonder if there is anything that can be done to confirm whether we have a problem, or not.

Posted By Mark Preston Get Lighting at Work http://www.hsebooks.co.uk/pub.html?pub=51 It will give you recommended levels and tell you how to measure them You will need an Illuminance meter You don't need to lay out much cash for one

Posted By John Ridd Different references give slightly different values for the type of areas/work you describe; here are a few examples but there are plenty of others. (Note the HSG 38 qualification about adequacy for safety i.e. perhaps not necessarily adequate for quality)- values in lux: HSG38 - movement of people machines and vehicles in hazardous areas=Min 50; Ave 100 - work requiring perception of detail= Min 100; Ave 200 (adequate for safety purposes) Grandjean (Ergonomics text)Storeroom = 80-170 Moderately precise work = 250-300 RS Components:Warehouse storage bay = 100-150 Machine work = 500-700

Posted By Adrian Watson Ken, You're quite right, the levels in HSG 38 are minimum acceptable levels. You should aim for the CIBSE guidelines. To measure general lighting levels, you should measure the average illuminance on the working plane (0.85 m above GL). To measure the average illuminace you should calculate the room index, exclude natural lighting, and measure lighting on a grid. The grid should not coinside with the lighting array, as your measurements will be too high. From the measurements you should also calculate the uniformity ratio (the ratio between the minimum and the average measurement) which should not be less than 0.8 Regards Adrian Watson LLM MSc Dip Occ Hyg FBIOH ROH FIOSH RSP MCIEH

Posted By Ken Taylor As a quick 'rule of thumb'/non-survey reponse to "Is the lighting OK in here?", I would admit to walking around with a light meter at desk height and taking CIBSE figures as the guide. I find HSG38 something of an embarrassment/obstacle in these cases and would like to see it revised (or even scrapped).

Posted By Adrian Watson Contact me offchat on akwatson@netcomuk.co.uk with your fax and tel no ands I'll send you more info. Regards Adrian