Helly all, I have been asked to undertake noise and light monitoring in offices, clinical rooms and dentistry areas. I have looked to try and find a decent monitor that also can download to the computer to help on assessing risk, levels and general information on results found. Can anyone help in regards to recommending a unit that would best suit with good accuracy. Obviously, cost would be a factor as these checks would be casual and not heavy in use. Your help would be appriciated John Prictor

Agree - hire in unless you will get a lost of use out of the meter. Remember - the cheapo instruments ( circa £80 ) are unlikely to be to the spec required for the job. The spec is in the noise regs somewhere.

It does seem a strange Project. A Dentist's waiting room is probably the quietest public environment I've ever been in, and adjustable "task lighting" is the order of the day for those doing the work in clinical/surgery areas.

I wouldn't even go that far. A basic awareness of noise, harmful noise levels etc should tell you all you need to know. Its easy enough to find in a text book an indicative table giving typical noise levels in different situations. Even your own personal experience should give you some level of experience to make a judgement. I would be surprised if a typical surgery clinical setting is more than 60-65db. Noise sources - medical equipment is generally pretty quiet. So external noise sources - people shouting/talking, passing transport if close to a main road/rail line, adjacent factories, alarms sounding on equipment. Difficult at first instance to see what you can do about most of these. Light levels, as others have said - generally bespoke task lighting suitable for the clinical need is already provided. Sure there may be local lighting issues from glare/reflection etc in offices.

Hi Ian Bell is probably right here and it is doubtful you would have a noise problem. Follow this link to the HSE guidance. http://www.hse.gov.uk/noise/advice.htm Read it and then ask yourself the questions in the "do I have a Problem" section. If you are not answering yes to these, then why would you take it any further? You can then concentrate on areas where there are serious H&S risks, and you may find the H part of this more an issue in dentistry. In terms of light - you can walk around and check this generally in terms of HSG38 (lighting risks) which is free to download from the HSE web site. You may wish to buy or hire in a lux meter to check that the task lighting is adequate or you could ask the dentists and check the manufacturers details.