DALY-Based Health Risk Assessment of Construction Noise in Beijing, China

Abstract

Noise produced by construction activities has become the second most serious acoustic polluting element in China. To provide industry practitioners with a better understanding of the health risks of construction noise and to aid in creating environmentally friendly construction plans during early construction stages, we developed a quantitative model to assess the health impairment risks (HIA) associated with construction noise for individuals living adjacent to construction sites. This model classifies noise-induced health impairments into four categories: cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, sleep disturbance, and annoyance, and uses disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) as an indicator of damage. Furthermore, the value of a statistical life (VSL) is used to transform DALYs into a monetary value based on the affected demographic characteristics, thereby offering policy makers a reliable theoretical foundation for establishing reasonable standards to compensate residents suffering from construction noise. A practical earthwork project in Beijing is used as a case study to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model. The results indicate that construction noise could bring significant health risks to the neighboring resident community, with an estimated 34.51 DALYs of health damage and 20.47 million yuan in social costs. In particular, people aged 45–54 are most vulnerable to construction noise, with the greatest health risks being caused by sleep disturbance.

Evidence for Environmental Noise Effects on Health for the United Kingdom Policy Context: A Systematic Review of the Effects of Environmental Noise on Mental Health, Wellbeing, Quality of Life, Cancer, Dementia, Birth, Reproductive Outcomes, and Cognition

“…Another study was identified from the recent Internoise 2019 conference [52] giving a total of 34 studies for consideration. Ten studies were excluded as they did not directly measure noise [20,21,[24][25][26][27]35,37], or because no associations between noise exposure and mental health were reported in the paper [29,32] (see Appendix A.2). This left 24 studies for inclusion in the review.…”

Noise and the city: Leveraging crowdsourced big data to examine the spatio-temporal relationship between urban development and noise annoyance

“…It also provided evidence that the impact of construction activities on noise complaints may be stronger during after-hours than regular hours. These results imply that the existing noise by-laws may not be effective in restricting construction activities at night and during sleeping hours, which were found to have harmful effects on sleep quality and related health effects (Halperin, 2014;Hammer et al, 2013;Hume, 2010;Xiao et al, 2016;Zou et al, 2007). Although construction activities can be considered as a sign of a healthy economy (Garcia-Milà and McGuire, 1992;Glaeser et al, 2006) Figure 2.…”

“…Finally, this study provides evidence that construction noise has far reaching impacts on the general population that go beyond those experienced by workers in occupational settings. In the (Fernández et al, 2009;Golmohammadi et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2015;Li et al, 2016;Neitzel et al, 2011;Seixas et al, 2012;Xiao et al, 2016).…”

Association between environmental noise and subjective symptoms related to cardiovascular diseases among elderly individuals in Japan

“…Nevertheless, our findings suggest that vicinal construction noise was the most significant noise among elderly individuals in our study. In China, 42.1% of environmental complaints have been reported to be associated with noise, 64.4%, 25.0%, 7.4%, and 2.2% of which were attributed to neighborhood noise, construction noise, industrial noise, and traffic noise, respectively; thus, noise is becoming a more serious problem due to rapid urbanization throughout China [ 31 ]. In our study, regarding environmental noise annoyance, the highest proportion of participants responded with construction noise, followed by aircraft, automobile, and neighborhood noise.…”