[Methodology for evaluating the social cost of noise in an industrial milieu]

The investments needed for the prevention of noise in industrial environment bring no apparent profit to the firms and are therefore often deferred or rejected. Yet noise costs money, but part of this cost is "externalized". This cost cannot be entirely measured in financial terms since it is much more a social cost. We used different methods to try to evaluate this social cost. Occupational deafness, which is a parital indicator, allowed us to calculate the financial cost of its "repair". The non-financial aspect has been approached in a psychosocial study whose main results are presented here. These approaches, if they were better studied and appropriately extended, should lead to a more realistic assessment of the social cost of this nuisance. In this context an accurate evaluation of the social cost of noise could socially and economically justify strategies for noise prevention whose components are now well-known.