Harassment and damage are caused by perturbances, which could be either natural (earthquakes) or man made (explosions, traffic, or machines). The man made perturbances, which are the main topic of this paper, cause waves that propagate through the soil. The waves are received at a specified location of interest. Here harassments or even damage occur. The main influencing factors on the grade of damage are: frequency content, kind of the waves, duration and intensities. For both theoretical and practical consideration different influencing factors, such as source, transmission and receiver conditions have to be considered. The prediction of vibration levels in practise and the assessment of harassment and damage to human and structures following different codes of practice are presented.