Noise in a hospital area. Measure and evaluation

The territory of Sciacca has been acoustically subdivided into homogeneous areas by the authors. In the present job, our attention is focused on the zones in class I that includes particularly sensitive areas as schools and hospitals. The acoustic climate inside and outside the hospital of Sciacca is carried out. The hospital was built on a hillock. Around the hillock two roads, an urban and a main highway are present, both with high traffic. With a campaign of measures, in proximity of the roads, in the hospital square, in the parking, and finally inside the hospital, the equivalent level and the patients exposure was calculated as Ld, Ln and DNL. Both the impact due to the roads (considered as external source) and due to internal traffic, equipments, tools of waste treatment (considered as internal source), has been analyzed. The comparison between noise values and normative limits allows us to evaluate the entity and the priority of the interventions.