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.