## Fact sheet on potential health effects of noise

Wolfgang Babisch1 and Martin van den Berg2

1Federal Environment Agency, Germany

2Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, The Netherlands

Dr. Wolfgang Babisch

Abteilung Umwelthygiene

Umweltbundesamt

Department of Environmental Hygiene

Federal Environment Agency

Corrensplatz 1

14195 Berlin

Germany

Fon: +49 (0)30 8903 1370

Fax: +49 (0)30 8903 1830

E-Mail: wolfgang.babisch@uba.de

URL: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de

The Expert Panal on Noise (EPoN) of the European Environmental Agency (EEA) is preparing a Fact Sheet on potential health effects of noise. The goal of this document is to collect and distribute knowledge about the health effects of noise. The emphasis is to provide end-users practical and validated tools to calculate health impacts of noise in all kind of strategic studies like the action plans or environmental impact statements. The noise mapping data according to the European Noise Directive (END) can be used for quantitative risk assessment and decision making in public health policies, in principle. However, there are limitations due to the incompleteness of the exposure data and the restriction to major agglomerations after the first round of END noise assessment.

The basis of the fact sheet is a number of recent reviews by well known institutions like WHO, National Health and Environment departments and professional organisations. The focus is clearly on established exposure-response curves for certain endpoints that can be used to estimate the number of affected people in communities and countries as a whole. The health endpoints considered are:

- Annoyance and disturbance

- Self-reported sleep disturbance

- EEG awakening

- Body movements during sleep

- Reported awakening

- Stress reactions

- Hypertension

- Cognitive impairment

Practical examples are shown how noise exposure data and health data can be linked for risk assessment, the calculation of public health indicators, such as DALYs (disability adjusted life years), and cost-benefit analyses. Finally, recommendations for quality targets are made.