WHO Regional Office for Europe.

Noise is a prominent feature of the environment including noise from transport, industry and neighbours. Exposure to transport noise disturbs sleep in the laboratory, but not generally in field studies where adaptation occurs. Noise interferes in complex task performance, modifies social behaviour and causes annoyance. Studies of occupational and environmental noise exposure suggest an association with hypertension, whereas community studies show only weak relationships between noise and cardiovascular disease. Aircraft and road traffic noise exposure are associated with psychological symptoms but not with clinically defined psychiatric disorder. In both industrial studies and community studies, noise exposure is related to raised catecholamine secretion. In children, chronic aircraft noise exposure impairs reading comprehension and long-term memory and may be associated with raised blood pressure. Further research is needed examining coping strategies and the possible health consequences of adaptation to noise.

/pdf/noise-pollution-non-auditory-effects-on-health-5fmte691k3.pdf

Noise pollution: non-auditory effects on health

The health impacts of environmental noise are a growing concern. At least one million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise in the western part of Europe. This publication summarises the evidence on the relationship between environmental noise and health effects, including cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, sleep disturbance, tinnitus, and annoyance. For each one, the environmental burden of disease methodology, based on exposure-response relationship, exposure distribution, background prevalence of disease and disability weights of the outcome, is applied to calculate the burden of disease in terms of disability-adjusted life-years. Data are still lacking for the rest of the WHO European Region. This publication provides policy-makers and their advisers with technical support in their quantitative risk assessment of environmental noise. International, national and local authorities can use the procedure for estimating burdens presented here to prioritize and plan environmental and public health policies.

Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise: Quantification of Healthy Life Years Lost in Europe

Noise and well-being in urban residential environments: The potential role of perceived availability to nearby green areas

http://www.sealab.gr/download/attachments/15565224/The+wind+energy+%28r%29evolution-+A+short+review+of+a+long+history.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1397239230000

The wind energy (r)evolution: A short review of a long history

To evaluate the relation between annoyance to environmental noise, general neurophysiological sensitivity, subjective noise sensitivity and other individual characteristics, experiments were undertaken in which 93 subjects assessed their subjective annoyance after exposure to noise under laboratory conditions. Evaluations were made of the discomfort threshold for pulsating sound, the light discomfort, and heat and cold discomfort. The heart rate and discomfort after exposure to a series of impulse noises was also determined. Subjective noise sensitivity, attitudes to noise, mood and personality characteristics of the subjects were evaluated using questionnaires. The results show that the annoyance after exposure to noise was not closely related to the general neurophysiological sensitivity, measured as discomfort threshold for noise, heat, cold and light; or to the heart rate reaction or discomfort after exposure to impulse noise. The annoyance was highly correlated with subjectively reported noise sensitivity and with the attitude to noise. There was also a relationship with neuroticism, measured with the EPI scale. It is suggested that the subjective noise sensitivity, attitude and neuroticism for the definition of noise sensitivity be defined in future studies of long term effects of noise exposure.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S003329170000828X

M. Björkman

Papers

Noise annoyance with regard to neurophysiological sensitivity, subjective noise sensitivity and personality variables.

Annoyance due to low frequency noise and the use of the dB(A) scale

Road Traffic Noise Annoyance in Relation to Average Noise Level, Number of Events and Maximum Noise Level

Effects of noise-disturbed sleep: a laboratory study on habituation and subjective noise sensitivity

Community noise annoyance: Importance of noise levels and the number of noise events