[The technical prevention of chronic acoustic trauma].

The present legislation establishes that workers' exposure to noise, which is the cause of chronic acoustic trauma, should be limited through the adoption of measures of technical and organizational nature. Organizational actions involve a plurality of aspects, not only technical in character, which are usually more difficult to apply and less rewarding in terms of acoustic benefits as compared to the technical ones; the latter should be primarily applied to the source, but are often adopted also at the noise propagation or reception level. Following a short summary of the normative framework, the article describes the approach that may be adopted in order to establish, in a given industrial setting, the priorities of intervention aimed at minimizing the noise exposure risk for the highest number of exposed workers.