WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region: A Systematic Review of Transport Noise Interventions and Their Impacts on Health

Abstract

This paper describes a systematic review (1980–2014) of evidence on effects of transport noise interventions on human health. The sources are road traffic, railways, and air traffic. Health outcomes include sleep disturbance, annoyance, cognitive impairment of children and cardiovascular diseases. A conceptual framework to classify noise interventions and health effects was developed. Evidence was thinly spread across source types, outcomes, and intervention types. Further, diverse intervention study designs, methods of analyses, exposure levels, and changes in exposure do not allow a meta-analysis of the association between changes in noise level and health outcomes, and risk of bias in most studies was high. However, 43 individual transport noise intervention studies were examined (33 road traffic; 7 air traffic; 3 rail) as to whether the intervention was associated with a change in health outcome. Results showed that many of the interventions were associated with changes in health outcomes irrespective of the source type, the outcome or intervention type (source, path or infrastructure). For road traffic sources and the annoyance outcome, the expected effect-size can be estimated from an appropriate exposure–response function, though the change in annoyance in most studies was larger than could be expected based on noise level change.

Autonomous Vehicles and Public Health

“…Another important aspect of AVs is the impact on road traffic noise. Road traffic noise has been associated with multiple health outcomes, including sleep disturbance, annoyance, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension (6,10,14,32,50,61). In Europe, for instance, environmental noise causes an estimated 10,000 premature deaths per year (9,88).…”

Modelling Cyclists’ Multi-Exposure to Air and Noise Pollution with Low-Cost Sensors—The Case of Paris

“…Two types of health impacts are distinguished: the auditory effects (hearing loss and tinnitus) and non-auditory effects linked to annoyance and stress generated by exposure to noise (physiological distress, disturbance of the organism's homeostasis, increasing allostatic load, sleep loss, concentration difficulties, etc.) [1][2][3][4][5]. The latter are important if the exposure is chronic and prolonged.…”

KIMA: Noise: A visual sound installation on urban noise

“…Studies have shown that noise impact on sleep patterns can occur at levels louder than 65dB in sensitive people, leading to anxiety, irritation and other symptoms of sleep deprivation (Korica, Popovic 2017). The most frequent response to environmental noise is annoyance, mild anger and feelings of intrusion into privacy (Guski et al 2017). Prolonged exposure to noise levels of 90dB and above, usually in occupational settings, can cause serious hearing damage and neurovegetative problems.…”