Application of the noise annoyance equivalents model for aircraft, rail and road traffic noise to self-reported sleep disturbance

Christoph Lechner,Stephan Bose-O’Reilly,David Schnaiter

doi:10.1051/aacus/2021005

Abstract

Sleep disturbances caused by noise exposure are the most relevant outcome measured in disability adjusted life years (DALYs). In analogy to the combined effects of noise from multiple sources on annoyance, these are also of interest for sleep disorders. The study “Overall Noise Assessment” Innsbruck examined data from 1031 personal interviews. Aircraft, rail and road noise were correlated. To choose participants combined exposures were clustered into small, medium and severely affected living situations. The effect of demographic features, noise sensitivity, access to a silent façade and other factors on self-reported sleep disturbances was investigated applying bivariate analyses. Exposure-response curves and their 95% confidence intervals with cut-off values of 72% for “highly disturbed sleep” were generated and the results were discussed in comparison to recently published curves. Using source-specific exposure-response relationships, an overall model for evaluating sleep disorders was developed based on the “annoyance equivalents model”. The “total sleep disturbance response” shows an accumulative outcome for each source measured. A protective effect of road traffic noise as background noise for air and railroad sources could not be proven. Both the “Total Sleep Disruption Assessment Model” and the “Dominant Source Model” have a Spearman-Rho of 0.3 and are therefore suitable for use in noise assessment.

Highlights

Environmental noise is becoming a more and more important public health topic
The WHO estimates the loss of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) from environmental noise to be 61 000 years for
This study is based on the results of the project “Total Noise Investigation Innsbruck” [19] and on the already published results [20]

Summary

Introduction

Environmental noise is becoming a more and more important public health topic. Environmental noise is considered as a severe environmental issue in Europe [1]. In Austria it is even considered the most urgent environmental issue with regard to the assessment of environmental conditions [2]. Serious efforts are ubiquitous in Europe for monitoring, assessment and mitigation [9]. For each outcome, based on exposure-response relationships, exposure distributions, background prevalence of disease and disability weights, the burden of disease in form of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) has been published. The WHO estimates the loss of DALYs from environmental noise to be 61 000 years for

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Conclusion