Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Claims

If you work around noise and you no longer hear the way you used to, you are not asking for a favour. Noise-induced sensorineural hearing loss sits on Argentina's official schedule of occupational diseases. If your job is on that schedule and you were exposed above 85 decibels, the law presumes the cause was work. And the lawyer who runs the claim is paid by the insurer, not by you.

1. When the law presumes workplace noise caused it

Decree 658/96 approves the Schedule of Occupational Diseases required by Section 6(2) of Law 24,557, the Workplace Risks Act. Under the agent Noise the schedule lists a single condition: sensorineural hearing loss. And the list of qualifying activities closes with a catch-all worth memorising: "any work involving exposure to a sound pressure intensity above 85 decibels of equivalent continuous sound level".

That is an objective, measurable test. It does not turn on the opinion of the insurer's doctor. The activities the decree names one by one include metalworking involving percussion, abrasion, projection or drilling of metal parts; rolling, wire-drawing, stretching, cutting and shearing; pneumatic tools such as drills, hammers and rock drills; textile spinning and weaving machinery; aviation engines, generator sets, compressors and turbines; the use and destruction of ammunition and explosives; stone and mineral grinding; tree felling with chainsaws; woodworking machines including circular and band saws, planers, spindle moulders and milling cutters; heavy machinery in freight transport, mining, public works and agricultural tractors; rubber and plastic grinding and injection; rotary printing presses; concrete vibrators on construction sites; installing and testing sound amplification equipment; and household waste collection.

If your job is in there, you do not have to build the causal link from scratch: the statute already presumes it. The argument with the insurer shifts to the degree of impairment, not the origin.

If your activity is not on the schedule, the route is Section 6(2)(b) of Law 24,557: a reasoned petition before the Jurisdictional Medical Board, which refers it up to the Central Medical Board. The Central Board has 30 days to rule and will only recognise the disease if work was the direct and immediate cause, excluding factors unrelated to work or attributable to you.

2. How your hearing loss is measured

A new impairment schedule has been in force since February 2026. Decree 549/2025 (Official Gazette, 6 August 2025) replaced Annex I of Decree 659/96 with a new Labour Impairment Assessment Table. It took effect 180 calendar days after publication and applies "to any assessment or determination of labour impairment not yet issued, regardless of the administrative or judicial stage it is at". In plain terms: if your file is still open, the new table reaches it wherever it sits.

The tests the schedule requires are an otological assessment, one audiometry, speech audiometry and a malingering test. And one detail moves the number: the audiometric results are assessed without hearing aids. Whatever a hearing aid gives you in daily life does not reduce your impairment rating.

Loss in one ear (monaural). The decibel loss by air conduction at 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 Hz in the affected ear is added up. That total goes to the Monaural Hearing Loss Table, which returns the unilateral impairment percentage directly.

Loss in both ears (bilateral). The decibel loss at those same four frequencies is added up for each ear separately. Both totals are then plotted on the American Academy of Otolaryngology (AAO) 1979 table, adopted by the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1984: the better ear value on the horizontal axis, the worse ear value on the vertical. The intersection gives the bilateral hearing loss percentage. That figure, multiplied by 0.42, is your labour impairment rating.

The 0.42 factor is what surprises most people when the report arrives. A bilateral loss that the AAO/AMA table puts at 20% does not translate into a 20% impairment: it is 8.4%. That is not an examiner's error, it is the schedule's methodology.

Where a single contingency leaves several ear, nose and throat sequelae, they are not added together either: the schedule requires the residual capacity method.

3. Weighting factors and the 65.99% ceiling

The table percentage is not the final number. Section 8(3) of Law 24,557 also requires weighting your age, the type of activity and your prospects of being redeployed. The current schedule assesses activity type and redeployment together, by measuring how much difficulty the sequela creates for your usual duties, and adds an age factor with its own table.

There is a ceiling. If the weighting factors push a partial impairment to 66% or above, the maximum recognised value is 65.99%. And where a total impairment would exceed 100%, the maximum is 100%.

4. What you collect: the Section 14 formula

Once the percentage is set, Section 14(2)(a) of Law 24,557 applies. It governs impairments of 50% or less, which covers practically every occupational hearing loss case:

53 × monthly Base Income × impairment percentage × (65 ÷ your age at the date of first disabling manifestation)

Base Income is the monthly average of all wages accrued in the year before the first disabling manifestation, indexed month by month by the RIPTE wage index (Section 12(1), Law 24,557). From that date until the payment is made available, Base Income accrues interest equal to the RIPTE variation itself (Section 12(2)). The full walkthrough is in our note on how workers' compensation is calculated.

On top of that result you add the 20% single-payment supplement under Section 3 of Law 26,773, which applies where the harm occurred at the workplace or while you were at the employer's disposal. In hearing loss caused by plant noise, that condition is met without argument.

A statutory floor also applies, updated every six months by the SRT using the RIPTE index. For the period running from 1 September 2026 to 28 February 2027, SRT Resolution 39/2026 set that the Section 14(2) award may not fall below ARS 114,354,110 multiplied by the permanent labour impairment percentage. If the formula produces less than the floor, you collect the floor. We track each semester's figures in what workers' comp pays for hearing loss.

And if the insurer fails to make payment available on time, Section 12(3) of Law 24,557 applies the Banco de la Nación Argentina 30-day general lending rate, capitalised every six months. Delay has a price.

5. If you already had recognised hearing loss

This is the standard situation for anyone who has worked in several noisy plants. The schedule resolves it with the residual capacity method, in two steps:

1. Step I: the pure pre-existing impairment — the figure before any weighting factors were added to it — is subtracted from your current impairment.
2. Step II: the residual capacity you still hold is applied to that difference, producing the incremental impairment for the hearing condition.

The worked example comes from the schedule itself. Prior claim: 3% impairment for bilateral hearing loss plus 0.30% in weighting factors, a total of 3.30%. Residual capacity: 96.70%. New claim: 5% bilateral hearing loss. The arithmetic is 5% − 3% = 2%, and 2% of 96.70% gives 1.93%.

Notice what gets subtracted: the pure prior impairment, not the one that already carried factors. That is why declaring earlier noisy jobs helps rather than hurts. Concealing them does not raise your rating; it hands the insurer grounds to attack the report later.

6. The Medical Board procedure, step by step

1. Notice of the disease. You or your treating doctor notify the insurer of suspected occupational hearing loss. The sooner it is on the record, the better: the date of first disabling manifestation determines which insurer answers and which age enters the formula.
2. Legal representation paid by the insurer. The final paragraph of Section 1 of Law 27,348 is explicit: professional fees for legal representation and other expenses the worker incurs by taking part in medical board proceedings are borne by the relevant workers' compensation insurer. Section 2 adds that all evidence produced at any stage is free of charge for the worker. One exception to keep in mind: if you appoint your own medical expert for the hearing, whoever proposes that expert pays for them.
3. If the insurer denies the claim. The contingency-rejection procedure opens with three items (Section 1, SRT Resolution 298/17): proof of identity, the accident or disease notice, and the insurer's reasoned rejection. If the insurer also argues the disease is unscheduled, you must add a reasoned petition with factual, medical and legal support. It is set out in our guide to workers' comp claim rejections.
4. If the insurer sits on it. Once temporary disability ends, the insurer has twenty days to request the impairment determination. If it lets that window pass, you can start the divergence procedure yourself, in person at the Medical Board registry or by post (Section 3, SRT Resolution 298/17). It is not a limitation period running against you: it is the insurer's deadline.
5. Deadline to rule. The Jurisdictional Medical Board has 60 administrative working days from the first properly completed filing (Section 3, Law 27,348), extendable once by up to 30 working days where evidence is still outstanding (Section 7, SRT Resolution 298/17). The deadlines are peremptory: once they lapse, the judicial route under Section 2 opens.
6. Report and review. The medical report is served on the parties and the employer within ten days. From that service you have three days to request correction of clerical or formal errors, or revocation where the reasoning contradicts the conclusion or a submission was left unanswered. How the hearing runs is detailed in our note on the Jurisdictional Medical Board.
7. Approval and payment. Once those requests are decided, a hearing is scheduled before the Settlement Approval Service. Section 4 of Law 26,773 then requires the insurer to notify you formally, within fifteen days of being served with the approval or the impairment determination, of the amounts due to you, itemised by head of claim, stating that they are available for collection.

Since March 2026 Section 4 bis of Law 27,348, inserted by Law 27,802, is also in force. It obliges adhering jurisdictions to apply the Impairment Assessment Table strictly, to establish or reinforce specialised forensic medical bodies, and to implement the digital environments the SRT provides to assist doctors and experts in calculating impairment. In hearing loss, where the spread between examiners was enormous, that matters.

If the hearing loss stems from an employer's breach — years of exposure above 85 decibels with no hearing protection, contrary to Law 19,587 on Workplace Health and Safety — full civil compensation is available, a route the Supreme Court opened in the Aquino ruling. But mind Section 4 of Law 26,773: the election is exclusive, the systems are not cumulative, and merely collecting money or filing suit under one of them means you have already elected. The comparison is set out in full in work accidents and workers' compensation.

7. Mistakes that lower your rating

• Taking the audiometry straight after your shift. The ear is still fatigued and the test records a temporary shift instead of the real permanent loss. Ask for the test after a period of auditory rest.
• Accepting the first rating without checking how presbycusis was separated out. Part of the loss may be age-related. If the report does not explain how it isolated one cause from the other, that is material for the three-day revocation request.
• Not declaring earlier noisy jobs. It distorts the residual capacity calculation and hands the insurer an undeclared pre-existing condition argument.
• Turning up to the audiometry wearing your hearing aid. The schedule requires the damage to be assessed without aids. A test run with one is useless for determining impairment.
• Letting the three days after the report lapse. It is the fastest and cheapest chance to correct a clerical error or a contradiction before you have to appeal.
• Signing at the approval hearing without reviewing the calculation. Once the settlement is approved, reopening the percentage is far harder.
• Skipping the Medical Board and going straight to court. Section 1 of Law 27,348 makes that administrative stage mandatory and exclusive. The only exception is unregistered workers of uninsured employers, who have the judicial route open to them.

Frequently asked questions about occupational hearing loss