Mower firms trim EU noise rules

Date: 13/05/1999

By Peter Chapman

THE lawn mower industry claims it has convinced EU governments to scale back plans for tough new noise restrictions on their products.

The industry had feared that member states would agree to a significant reduction in noise levels, from a maximum 100 decibels to 98, for a massive slice of the mower market.

But Dan Ericsson, research and development manager with Electrolux's Swedish lawnmower unit Husqvarna, claims governments have now accepted the need to give the industry more time to produce quieter machines.

The threat to the mower industry emerged in working groups of EU member state experts discussing proposals on outdoor machinery noise launched by Acting Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard last year.

France and Scandanavian member states led calls for additional rules to govern mowers with blades of between 50 and 120 centimetres to be added to Bjerregard's proposals, which only called for improved labelling to inform consumers of the noise levels generated by individual models.

The industry feared that this would force manufacturers to re-tool their plants to produce quieter mowers in this range as soon as the legislation was implemented by member states.

But Ericsson said national officials had now accepted the industry's argument that trying to cut back on one of the characteristic noises of summer within such a short timeframe could cost companies a fortune and might be counterproductive by making machines less efficient at trimming lawns.

Instead, he said, member states were now supporting a plan to impose the 98-decibel limit on a limited number of machines with narrower 50-70 centimetre blades. Moreover, under the latest plan, this restriction would only be imposed five and a half years after the legislation entered into force.

Ericsson said there were a lot of mowers in the 50-70 cm band, but added that the industry could "live with" the new timescale now being proposed.

" It is crucial that we have the extra time because there is a lot of tooling to be changed if you wish to have a broad product range," he said. "Going down from 100 to 98 decibels does not seem a lot. But the [logarithmic] scale in which noise is measured means a two-decibel drop is actually a 37% reduction."

Despite fresh optimism that the threat of even tougher rules has been averted, Adrian Harris, EU affairs expert for the European Garden Machinery Federation (EGMF), said the industry was "not taking anything for granted" ahead of a meeting of member state experts on the issue next Monday (17 May).

" Our main worry is that noise limits will be revised in such a way that they are difficult to follow," he said.

Once EU governments have reached agreement on the proposals, the draft legislation will be sent to the European Parliament for scrutiny, with the new intake of MEPs elected in next month's Euro-poll expected to discuss them in the autumn.