This paper addresses issues encountered in using the ISO and national standard codes to assess the hazards of whole-body vibration and repeat shocks. Their assessment methods are given in ISO 2631-1 (1974, 1985, 1997) and BS 6841 (1987) that are now available to us. Two standard codes can yield unfortunately different assessment results even for a single measured vibration signal. Possible reasons for such different results are pointed out and, furthermore, related questions that should be re-examined in the future are raised in this paper.