The assessment of auditory damage risk in particularly noisy environments

The most negative effects caused by noise exposure related to the hearing system are well known and may produce professional or even permanent deafness. Since these effects have very important influence on worker’s health and well-being, it is necessary to evaluate the hearing loss caused by occupational exposure to noise in order to propose preventive solutions. A large number of compensation claims are submitted each year in Italy for the occupational disease “hypoacusis”. The criticalities for assessing the risk of auditory damage is related to the fact that a scientifically accepted relation between hearing loss and noise frequency still not exist for the Italian population. Besides, at today there is not criterion of damage accepted by the scientific community for several different work field. In this work, we present a methodological approach for calculating the provisional risk of auditory damage for the airport ramp’s operators. The calculation method is based upon on the definitions and the Annexes of the ISO 1999/90, the table of biological damage to the hearing loss of D.M. 12/07/2000 (Italian Ministerial Decree) and the four damage criteria defined by S. Casini (Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work). The approach considers the hearing loss as caused not only by the occupational exposure to noise, but also by biologic ageing. The risk matrices have been evaluated basing on the numerical results obtained by simulations performed with the software Rumours. One matrix for each criterion of damage has been developed.