Let $G/K$ be an irreducible symmetric space, where G is a noncompact, connected Lie group and K is a compact, connected subgroup. We use decay properties of the spherical functions to show that the convolution product of any $r=r(G/K)$ continuous orbital measures has its density function in $L^{2}(G)$ and hence is an absolutely continuous measure with respect to the Haar measure. The number r is approximately the rank of $G/K$ . For the special case of the orbital measures, $\nu _{a_{i}}$ , supported on the double cosets $Ka_{i}K$ , where $a_{i}$ belongs to the dense set of regular elements, we prove the sharp result that $\nu _{a_{1}}\ast \nu _{a_{2}}\in L^{2},$ except for the symmetric space of Cartan class $AI$ when the convolution of three orbital measures is needed (even though $\nu _{a_{1}}\ast \nu _{a_{2}}$ is absolutely continuous).