The ODELIA study on Noise Limits for Outdoor Machinery

In the ODELIA study for the European Commission an assessment of the outdoor equipment noise directive 2000/14/EC and its amendment 2005/88/EC has been performed. The directive requires noise marking for 57 types of equipment used outdoors, and sets noise limits for 22 of these. Since the limits have remained unchanged for many years, there is now a compelling need to revise the existing limit values, potentially add new ones and introduce new equipment types where justified. Also the test codes for the many different machines types have been reviewed. Proposals have been made taking available documents and data into account from 2007 until the present. Criteria applied in the assessment included member state requests and information, environmental impact, stakeholder information from industry, notified bodies, authorities and NGOs, technical progress including databases of declared values, economic impact, and quality of the test codes. Tighter limits were proposed for 9 equipment types and new limits were proposed for 28 types currently without limits. 13 new equipment types were proposed to be included in the directive. In this paper the findings, justifications and recommendations of the study are summarised.