Ruído ocupacional em ambiente de pós-colheita do café

Abstract

The post-harvest is an essential stage for achieving the quality and excellence of coffee beans. At this time, the product, coming from the farm, undergoes processing, drying, hulling, dry mill process, and storage, so that it reaches the roasting and final consumer with the best possible quality. The aforementioned operations take place on the farm, with the exception of reprocessing, which usually takes place in cooperatives and companies in the coffee sector. The operation of the set of machines used for these operations in a closed environment causes noise, an occupational risk agent that is harmful to the well-being, health and safety of workers, classified as unhealthy by the relevant legislation. However, despite this information being known by managers, there is a lack of information and scientific research regarding noise behavior and mitigation in agro-industrial environments. In this sense, the objective of this work was to investigate the behavior of the sound pressure levels generated in the post-harvest of coffee, in order to verify possible damages to the hearing of the workers involved and to seek solutions to minimize the problem. The work was carried out on two farms and a grain warehouse. The sites were visited for knowledge of the layout and data collection. Equidistant demarcations were made in the sheds where the machines are installed, NPS and geographic positioning data were collected for each measurement. The values were grouped in the form of a table and submitted to geostatistics. The kriging technique was used to draw the noise maps. With the aid of the maps, the behavior of noise levels in each post-harvest environment was analyzed, identifying the equipment with the highest noise averages. In all environments, it was possible to understand the behavior of the physical occupational noise agent, and observe that values exceeded 85 dB(A) for an exposure time of 8 hours, considering the tolerance limit, requiring the application of mitigations. The grain processing environment showed greater discrepancies in noise averages (17 dB(A)) and the hulling machine presented the highest average emissions (99 dB(A)). In the warehouse, the reprocessing environment presented high average noise (95 dB(A)), mainly due to the use of machines that separate and classify the coffee beans. Among the proposed mitigations are structural measures, such as choosing less noisy machines and equipment, adequate layout, constant maintenance, construction of walls, corridors and cabins with coatings and acoustic insulation, in addition to administrative measures that aim to reduce the exposure time of workers to noise. Finally, the creation of a training and awareness policy on the importance of health and safety for workers in rural work environments.