scholarly journals The Public Health Impact of Road-Traffic Noise in a Highly-Populated City, Republic of Korea: Annoyance and Sleep Disturbance

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taeho Park ◽  
Minho Kim ◽  
Chaemi Jang ◽  
Taeryang Choung ◽  
Kyung-A Sim ◽  
...  

Sustainable transportation is an essential part of a sustainable city; however, modern transportation systems with internal-combustion engines emits unacceptably high level of air-pollutants and noise. It is recognized widely that road-traffic noise has negative health impacts (such as annoyance and sleep disturbance) on exposed population in highly-populated cities. These harmful effects should be removed or at least reduced to guarantee the sustainability of modern cities. The estimation of pollutant levels at a specific location and the extent of the damage is therefore important for policy makers. This study presents a procedure to determine the levels of road-traffic noise at both day and night, and an assessment of the adverse health effects across Gwangju Metropolitan City (GMC), Republic of Korea (ROK). Road-traffic noise maps in 2-D and 3-D were generated, in order to find spatial distribution of noise levels across the city and noise level at the façade of a building-floor, respectively. The adoption of existing assessment models for the highly-annoyed (%HA) and highly-sleep-disturbed (%HSD) leads to building-based estimation of the affected population and spatial distribution of the road networks of the city. Very high noise levels were found to exist along major roads in the day and at night, with little difference between them. As a result, approximately 10% and 5% of the total population (n = 1,471,944) were estimated to experience high-level annoyance and sleep disturbance, respectively.

Author(s):  
Emmanouil A. Papadimitriou ◽  
Grigorios P. Papageorgiou ◽  
Nikolaos Alamanis ◽  
Theodosia-Niki Diakosavva

Greece, as well as other developed countries, is facing the growing problem of road traffic noise. It stands for a severe problem in the urban areas of the country, including the city of Larissa. The root cause is the huge increase in traffic volume and the lack of adequate urban infrastructure planning. Estimation of the level of road traffic noise is usually conducted using acoustic meters. It is widely accepted that most of the cities’ population is exposed to high noise levels due to controversial traffic capacity. Moreover, high noise levels are strongly related to phycological and neurological diseases. Thus, it is of utmost importance, the road noise levels to be lower than dictated by relevant specification limits. To develop better noise-environment policies, relative research should focus on the measurement of in-situ noise levels, so as appropriate for each case corrective measures to be taken. The present paper examines the noise levels of a center road of the 5th Greek city, in terms of population, compared to worldwide adopted noise specification limits. The clear aim stands for finding the percentage of road noise that exceeds commonly accepted threshold values, namely limit values of European Union and World Health Organization. The results of this research strongly indicate that measured noise values override upper limit values in a certain extent.


Noise Mapping ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerónimo Vida Manzano ◽  
José Antonio Almagro Pastor ◽  
Rafael García Quesada ◽  
Francesco Aletta ◽  
Tin Oberman ◽  
...  

Abstract Exceptional circumstances in the city of Granada due to the COVID-19 lockdown have provided the opportunity to characterise the impact of humans on its urban acoustic climate. Traditional environmental noise management and urban sound planning usually take into account noise sources in the city, such as industrial activities or road traffic noise, in model estimations, as well as in empirical research. But trying to isolate human impact by itself, human activity including social activity, walking, talking or just going around the city, has always been a difficult or even impossible task. The COVID-19 lockdown measures have provided the opportunity to study urban climate as never before, affected just by natural or animal noise sources. Previous soundscape research at some iconic sites in the city of Granada carried out in 2019 before the lockdown and a special measuring campaign carried out at the same locations during the lockdown in 2020 offered valuable information on sound levels and local characteristics in order to carry out this comparison. Results show a great change in environmental noise levels that is interesting not only because of its magnitude, but also for its implications, especially at those sites where social human activity was an identifying characteristic. Natural or animal sounds became surprisingly evident at some study sites, especially where road traffic noise dramatically decreased, leading to significantly lower background noise levels. Important spectral changes are observed before and during the lockdown, suggesting a shift from anthropic to animal sources in the acoustic environment.


Author(s):  
Herni Halim ◽  
◽  
Nur Fatin Najiyah Hamid ◽  
Mohamad Firdaus Mahamad Yusob ◽  
Nur Atiqah Mohamad Nor ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 107412
Author(s):  
Ines Bouzid ◽  
Ahmed Derbel ◽  
Boubaker Elleuch

Behaviour ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 150 (6) ◽  
pp. 569-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Vargas-Salinas ◽  
Adolfo Amézquita

Acoustically communicating species have evolved adaptations that allow them to transmit information and overcome signal masking where their habitat is disturbed by anthropogenic noise. To investigate whether calling behaviour or spatial distribution is related to road traffic noise we studied the poison frog Andinobates bombetes in a mid-elevation forest remnant that has been exposed to heavy traffic noise throughout more than four decades. To test whether frogs avoid call during noise episodes generated by passing trucks, we compared background noise levels between calling and non-calling times. To test whether traffic noise is correlated with frogs spatial distribution, we measured frog abundance, ambient noise, and environmental covariates throughout a set of 24 sampling plots between 15 and 300 m from two forest edges, one bordered by the road and another one by an agricultural field. Frogs called more often when traffic noise level was lower. Frogs abundance was only marginally correlated with distance to noisy edges but was predictable from the abundance of bromeliad tanks, an alleged limiting resource for their reproduction. Apparently, to avoid calling during episodes with higher noise level allowed frogs to reduce the detrimental masking effects of anthropogenic noise; if so, it would explain why frog distribution is poorly correlated with distance to the noisy road.


2013 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla M.T. Tiesler ◽  
Matthias Birk ◽  
Elisabeth Thiering ◽  
Gabriele Kohlböck ◽  
Sibylle Koletzko ◽  
...  

1970 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-440
Author(s):  
Tayyaba Aftab ◽  
Farzana Bashir ◽  
Tahira Shafiq

A road traffic noise study was conducted in Lahore at 18 busy places of high traffic flow in peak working hours of the day. It has been found that the day time average noise level has crossed the permissible limit of 85dB(A) at 90% busy points in the city. The maximum average noise level recorded in Lahore was 104 dB(A). This high level attributed to vehicular traffic specially auto rickshaw with ineffective silencers (without filters) and frequent use of the pressure horns by buses, wagons and trucks etc. The findings of the survey provide enough baseline data for engineering controls and interim legislation against traffic noise pollution. Key words: Noise pollution, Traffics load , Community health, Lahore city Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res. 42(4), 435-440, 2007


2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antônio Sérgio Melo Barbosa ◽  
Maria Regina Alves Cardoso

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Argalasova ◽  
T. Kimakova ◽  
E. Panulinova ◽  
A. Filova ◽  
A. Pultznerova ◽  
...  

Abstract The significant growth in traffic density in Slovakia, combined with the country’s economic change, has resulted in new environmental noise issues, particularly in road traffic noise. The objective of this study was to assess and evaluate the impact of environmental noise on the psychosocial well-being of young healthy individuals in the two main Slovak cities of Bratislava and Kosice. To assess noise annoyance, interference with activities, and sleep disturbance, the ICBEN (The International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise) anonymous validated “Noise annoyance questionnaire” was applied; noise levels were objectified by direct measurements using a sound level analyzer with a frequency analysis module. Young individuals between the ages of 20 and 30 were interviewed in Bratislava (533 respondents, 155 males) and Kosice (355 respondents, 111 males). The majority of the respondents in both cities were exposed to medium levels of road traffic noise LAeq ≥ 60 dB. In Bratislava, 27.82 % of respondents resided in the higher noise exposure category LAeq ≥ 70 dB, while in Kosice, 39.9 % resided in the lower noise exposure category LAeq < 50 dB. Road traffic noise annoys respondents in the higher noise exposure category in Bratislava 63.51 %, and even in the lower noise exposure category in Kosice, it interferes with reading and mental work, sleep and falling asleep 46.51 %. The study has identified traffic noise as an environmental issue in large cities, emphasizing the need for vulnerable individuals to be protected, particularly at night.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12561
Author(s):  
Ablenya Grangeiro de Barros ◽  
Jarl K. Kampen ◽  
Cedric Vuye

Low-noise thin asphalt layers (TALs) are a feasible solution to mitigate road traffic noise in urban environments. Nevertheless, the impacts of this type of noise intervention are reported mostly regarding noise levels, while non-acoustic aspects influencing the population perception are still little-known. This study investigates the implementation of TALs in two streets of Antwerp, Belgium. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured via noise modelling and acoustic measurements of road traffic noise. A reduction of 2.8 dB in noise exposure was observed in Lden and Lnight, while SPB measurements showed decreases up to 5.2 dB on the roadside. The subjective impacts of the TALs were evaluated via self-administered surveys and compared to results from control streets. The annoyance indicators were positively impacted by the TALs implementation, resulting in annoyance levels similar or lower than in the control streets. The TALs did not impact the reported physical complaints, sleep quality, and comfort level to perform activities.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document