Noise pollution

About: Noise pollution is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4455 publications have been published within this topic receiving 67192 citations.

Noise from a phantom road experiment alters the age structure of a community of migrating birds

Abstract: Several past studies have demonstrated the effects of anthropogenic noise on populations of animals. Yet, differing effects of noise by age and subsequent changes in the age structure of populations are poorly understood. We experimentally tested the effects of traffic noise alone on the age structure of a community of migrating birds at a fall stopover site in south-western Idaho using an array of speakers – creating a phantom road – that replicated the sound of a roadway without other confounding aspects of roads. Both hatch-year and adult birds were negatively affected by noise – having lower capture rates, lower body condition and lower stopover efficiency along the phantom road when the noise was on compared to control conditions. However, hatch-year birds responded more strongly which lead to a significant shift in the ratio of hatch-year to adult birds under noisy conditions. Our previous work using the phantom road demonstrated that traffic noise can degrade the quality of a stopover site by affecting the ability of migrating birds to gain body condition. Here, we demonstrate differences between age classes such that although noise degrades habitat for both hatch-year and adult migrants, there are still differences in responses to noise between age groups. Despite alternative explanations of our results such as changes in behavior affecting capture likelihood, evidence suggests that younger birds avoided the phantom road more than adult birds perhaps because of different tradeoffs between foraging and predation risk and differing strategies of site selection during migration.

Research on road traffic noise and human health in India: Review of literature from 1991 to current

Abstract: This article reviews the literature on research conducted during the last two decades on traffic noise impacts in India. Road traffic noise studies in India are fewer and restricted only to the metropolitan areas. The studies over the years have also focused on the monitoring, recording, analysis, modeling, and to some extent mapping related themes. Negligible studies are observed in areas of physiological and sleep research exposure-effect context. Most impact studies have been associated with annoyance and attitudinal surveys only. Little scientific literature exists related to effects of traffic noise on human physiology in the Indian context. The findings of this review search and analysis observe that very little studies are available relating to traffic noise and health impacts. All of them are subjective response studies and only a small portion of them quantify the exposure-effect chain and model the noise index with annoyance. The review of papers showed that road traffic noise is a cause for annoyance to a variety of degree among the respondents. A generalization of impacts and meta-analysis was not possible due to variability of the study designs and outputs preferred.

The Age of Noise: Early Reactions in Vienna, 1870—1914

Abstract: During the second half of the nineteenth century, a heightened sensitivity to noise arose in European cities. In a context of expanding industrialization and urbanization, medical journals and leading newspapers published extensive articles on the changing acoustic conditions of cities. Neurologists and ear specialists increasingly were confronted with the physical effects of noise pollution, and civic officials and sanitary inspectors noted a marked increase of noise-related complaints. Engineers, architects, and urban planners searched for ways to reduce the din, and conferences on sanitary regulations and health management put noise and how to avoid it on their agendas. This study highlights the social background of this movement in Vienna. It describes the radically changed soundscape in a fast-growing metropolis and examines the heightened discourse on noise among the middle classes between 1870 and 1914. By analyzing the reactions to noise—for example, the ways in which noise-abatement campaigns wer...