Following the Parma Declaration on Environment and Health adopted at the Fifth Ministerial Conference (2010), the Ministers and representatives of Member States in the WHO European Region requested the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop updated guidelines on environmental noise, and called upon all stakeholders to reduce children’s exposure to noise, including that from personal electronic devices. The WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region will provide evidence-based policy guidance to Member States on protecting human health from noise originating from transportation (road traffic, railway and aircraft), wind turbine noise, and leisure noise in settings where people spend the majority of their time. Compared to previous WHO guidelines on noise, the most significant developments include: consideration of new evidence associating environmental noise exposure with health outcomes, such as annoyance, cardiovascular effects, obesity and metabolic effects (such as diabetes), cognitive impairment, sleep disturbance, hearing impairment and tinnitus, adverse birth outcomes, quality of life, mental health, and wellbeing; inclusion of new noise sources to reflect the current noise environment; and the use of a standardized framework (grading of recommendations, assessment, development, and evaluations: GRADE) to assess evidence and develop recommendations. The recommendations in the guidelines are underpinned by systematic reviews of evidence on several health outcomes related to environmental noise as well as evidence on interventions to reduce noise exposure and/or health outcomes. The overall body of evidence is published in this Special Issue.

Background: In England, drug use in young people increased significantly between 2014 and 2017. This upward trend continues despite implementation of drug use policies to reduce supply, possession and manufacture of illicit drugs. Taking the view that drug use is a learnt behaviour, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether social learning (SL) factors explain drug use in English adolescents across: a) nine regions b) by age (11 to 15 years) and c) by gender using the Social Structure Social Learning (SSSL) theory as a framework. This study addresses a gap in the literature on English adolescent students by identifying the strongest SL pathway to drug use (imitation, parental reinforcement, attitudes, peer association). Methods: Cumulative mediation analyses were carried out on data from the Smoking Drinking Drug Use Survey 2016 (N = 12,051) on adolescents aged 11-15 years across England. Results: The results show that imitation, peer association, attitudes and parental reinforcement mediate drug use at ages 12-14 and for some regions but not for gender. Conclusion: Drug use is a socially learnt behaviour in adolescents students living in England.

Background: This paper builds on the results from the study: Illicit drug use in English adolescent students -results of a cumulative mediation analyses. The study sets out to specify the most significant social learning (SL) pathways for each of the ages, regions, and gender. Methods: Mediation analyses of a secondary dataset: Smoking Drinking Drug Use Survey 2016 (N = 12,051) on adolescents aged 11-15 years. Results: The most important SL pathway to drug use for boys was imitation of friends and for girls it was having the "perception" that fellow peers were consuming drugs. Positive attitudes to glue was a strong SL pathway at ages 11 and 12 but not for ages 13-15 years. In the Northern parts of England positive attitudes to cannabis and in the Southern regions peer association were the strongest SL pathways to drug use. Conclusion:The results are of relevance to policy because they confirm that drug use is a learnt behaviour and that this learnt behaviour varies for gender, region and specific ages.