Background: Environmental health effects vary considerably with regard to their severity, type of disease, and duration. Integrated measures of population health, such as environmental burden of disease (EBD), are useful for setting priorities in environmental health policies and research. This review is a summary of the full Environmental Burden of Disease in European countries (EBoDE) project report. Objectives: The EBoDE project was set up to provide assessments for nine environmental risk factors relevant in selected European countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands). Methods: Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were estimated for benzene, dioxins, secondhand smoke, formaldehyde, lead, traffic noise, ozone, particulate matter (PM2.5), and radon, using primarily World Health Organization data on burden of disease, (inter)national exposure data, and epidemiological or toxicological risk estimates. Results are presented here without discounting or age-weighting. Results: About 3–7% of the annual burden of disease in the participating countries is associated with the included environmental risk factors. Airborne particulate matter (diameter ≤ 2.5 μm; PM2.5) is the leading risk factor associated with 6,000–10,000 DALYs/year and 1 million people. Secondhand smoke, traffic noise (including road, rail, and air traffic noise), and radon had overlapping estimate ranges (600–1,200 DALYs/million people). Some of the EBD estimates, especially for dioxins and formaldehyde, contain substantial uncertainties that could be only partly quantified. However, overall ranking of the estimates seems relatively robust. Conclusions: With current methods and data, environmental burden of disease estimates support meaningful policy evaluation and resource allocation, including identification of susceptible groups and targets for efficient exposure reduction. International exposure monitoring standards would enhance data quality and improve comparability. Citation: Hänninen O, Knol AB, Jantunen M, Lim TA, Conrad A, Rappolder M, Carrer P, Fanetti AC, Kim R, Buekers J, Torfs R, Iavarone I, Classen T, Hornberg C, Mekel OC, EBoDE Working Group. 2014. Environmental burden of disease in Europe: assessing nine risk factors in six countries. Environ Health Perspect 122:439–446; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1206154

Environmental Burden of Disease in Europe: Assessing Nine Risk Factors in Six Countries

Strategic environmental noise mapping : methodological issues concerning the implementation of the EU Environmental Noise Directive and their policy implications

Mit der Veroeffentlichung im Amtsblatt der Europaeischen Gemeinschaften ist die "Richtlinie des Europaeischen Parlaments und des Rates ueber die Bewertung und die Bekaempfung von Umgebungslaerm" in Kraft getreten. Die Europaeische Gemeinschaft hat damit erstmalig eine rechtliche Regelung hinsichtlich der Geraeuschimmissionen in der Umwelt erlassen. Die Richtlinie soll ein gemeinsames Konzept festlegen, um schaedliche Auswirkungen, einschliesslich Belaestigung, durch Umgebungslaerm zu verhindern, ihnen vorzubeugen oder sie zu mindern. Sie soll weiterhin eine Grundlage fuer die Einfuehrung von Gemeinschaftsmassnahmen zur Laermminderung bei den wichtigsten Laermquellen darstellen. Die Anforderungen der Richtlinie werden vorgestellt und erklaert, und es werden erste Ansaetze fuer ein Umsetzungskonzept dargestellt. (A) ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: The "Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise" has been published in the Official Journal of the European Communities and thus entered into force. The aim of this Directive shall be to define a common approach intended to avoid, prevent or reduce the harmful effects, including annoyance, due to exposure to environmental noise. It shall also aim at providing a basis for developing Community measures to reduce noise emitted by the major sources. The requirements of the Directive are presented and discussed and first ideas concerning the transposition in national legislation are given. (A)

Die EG-Richtlinie zur Bewertung und Bekaempfung von Umgebungslaerm / The European Directive relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise

Aims Blood biochemistry may provide information on associations between road traffic noise, air pollution, and cardiovascular disease risk. We evaluated this in two large European cohorts (HUNT3, Lifelines). Methods and results Road traffic noise exposure was modelled for 2009 using a simplified version of the Common Noise Assessment Methods in Europe (CNOSSOS-EU). Annual ambient air pollution (PM10, NO2) at residence was estimated for 2007 using a Land Use Regression model. The statistical platform DataSHIELD was used to pool data from 144 082 participants aged ≥20 years to enable individual-level analysis. Generalized linear models were fitted to assess cross-sectional associations between pollutants and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), blood lipids and for (Lifelines only) fasting blood glucose, for samples taken during recruitment in 2006-2013. Pooling both cohorts, an inter-quartile range (IQR) higher day-time noise (5.1 dB(A)) was associated with 1.1% [95% confidence interval (95% CI: 0.02-2.2%)] higher hsCRP, 0.7% (95% CI: 0.3-1.1%) higher triglycerides, and 0.5% (95% CI: 0.3-0.7%) higher high-density lipoprotein (HDL); only the association with HDL was robust to adjustment for air pollution. An IQR higher PM10 (2.0 µg/m3) or NO2 (7.4 µg/m3) was associated with higher triglycerides (1.9%, 95% CI: 1.5-2.4% and 2.2%, 95% CI: 1.6-2.7%), independent of adjustment for noise. Additionally for NO2, a significant association with hsCRP (1.9%, 95% CI: 0.5-3.3%) was seen. In Lifelines, an IQR higher noise (4.2 dB(A)) and PM10 (2.4 µg/m3) was associated with 0.2% (95% CI: 0.1-0.3%) and 0.6% (95% CI: 0.4-0.7%) higher fasting glucose respectively, with both remaining robust to adjustment for air/noise pollution. Conclusion Long-term exposures to road traffic noise and ambient air pollution were associated with blood biochemistry, providing a possible link between road traffic noise/air pollution and cardio-metabolic disease risk.

Long-term Exposure to Road Traffic Noise, Ambient Air Pollution, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in the HUNT and Lifelines Cohorts

Soundscape categorization on the basis of objective acoustical parameters

Advances in the development of common noise assessment methods in Europe: The CNOSSOS-EU framework for strategic environmental noise mapping

Testing the acoustical corrections for reflections on a façade

Access to high quality data is essential in order to better understand the environmental and health impact of noise in an increasingly urbanised world. This paper analyses how recent developments of spatial data infrastructures in Europe can significantly improve the utilization of data and streamline reporting on a pan-European scale. The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE), and Environmental Noise Directive (END) described in this manuscript provide principles for data management that, once applied, would lead to a better understanding of the state of environmental noise. Furthermore, shared, harmonised and easily discoverable environmental spatial data, required by the INSPIRE, would also support the data collection needed for the assessment and development of strategic noise maps. Action plans designed by the EU Member States to reduce noise and mitigate related effects can be shared to the public through already established nodes of the European spatial data infrastructure. Finally, data flows regarding reporting on the state of environment and END implementation to the European level can benefit by applying a decentralised e-reporting service oriented infrastructure. This would allow reported data to be maintained, frequently updated and enable pooling of information from/to other relevant and interrelated domains such as air quality, transportation, human health, population, marine environment or biodiversity. We describe those processes and provide a use case in which noise data from two neighbouring European countries are mapped to common data specifications, defined by INSPIRE, thus ensuring interoperability and harmonisation.

A Spatial Data Infrastructure for Environmental Noise Data in Europe

In the context of the implementation of the Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC a study on noise measurement uncertainty was developed. In performing any noise measurement average, there might be assumptions over the distribution and independency of the samples. In a concrete example dealing with environmental noise, this might be the case of a series of measurements of a constant noise source like an industrial plant or a fluctuating noise source like road traffic. Using a series of 1 day Leq in the first case, or a series of 15 minutes samples in the second case, the average of these values is usually considered as the expected mean, however, the error caused by the specific selection of the samples is not evaluated. Statistically speaking, before establishing an average value, at least the lognormal distribution of the samples and the effect of adding‐up several uncertainties should be evaluated. This article will focus on the formulas to be used and will discuss differences in assessing the expec...

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Expected mean in an environmental noise measurement and its related uncertainty

This article will present the differences among noise maps of Lden and Lnight levels produced following the EU Interim methods and those produced following other national methods used in the EU MS. Lden and Lnight are the two indicators required by the European Environmental Noise Directive (2002/49/EC) defined at the position of 4 m height and 2 m away from the facade of a building. Four different comparisons will be presented for road, railway, industrial, and aircraft noise. This article will also focus on the methodology used to assess the equivalence among the national methods against the interim ones as well as the statistical approach used to consider uncertainties. Finally, the input values used, the parameters and the lay‐outs of the four protocols corresponding to the four environmental noise sources (i.e., road traffic, railway, industrial, and aircraft noise) adopted for the equivalence exercise will be also presented.

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Stylianos Kephalopoulos

Papers

Advances in the development of common noise assessment methods in Europe: The CNOSSOS-EU framework for strategic environmental noise mapping

Testing the acoustical corrections for reflections on a façade

A Spatial Data Infrastructure for Environmental Noise Data in Europe

Expected mean in an environmental noise measurement and its related uncertainty

Differences among European noise mapping methods