Abstract
Noise legislation in Austria does not provide an assessment of the cumulative effect of noise from different sources. The desire of citizens for a total noise assessment is getting stronger. Within the pilot project “Gesamtlärmbetrachtung” (Total Noise Investigation) Innsbruck, data from 1031 face-to-face interviews were correlated with exposure data from road, rail and air traffic noise. The interviews were selected in clusters according to the exposure combinations of these three sources. In addition to exposure-response relationships, it has also been found that the annoyance response to air and rail traffic noise is independent of the background noise from road traffic. The total noise annoyance response shows a cumulative effect in each source considered. From the source specific exposure-response relationships, a total noise assessment model based on the annoyance equivalents model was developed. This model is more suitable than the dominant source model and thus also considerable for legal application.
Highlights
Noise pollution represents a major health problem in modern society [1] leading to multiple adverse health effects if not properly monitored and assessed
The significant results for annoyed participants influenced by all three traffic noise sources is an indicator that an annoyance equivalents model is appropriate to describe total noise annoyance by multiple sources
In Austria the general approach for rating noise is the assessment of annoyance after the change of actual local conditions
Summary
Noise pollution represents a major health problem in modern society [1] leading to multiple adverse health effects if not properly monitored and assessed. In order to attenuate these effects, studies and mitigating measures such as action plans [13] have been implemented worldwide in the last decades for the main transportation sources of noise affecting modern human lifestyle. Applying conservative assumptions to the calculation methods the WHO estimates DALYs lost from environmental noise by 61,000 years for ischemic heart disease, 45,000 years for cognitive impairment of children, 903,000 years for sleep disturbances, 22,000 years for tinnitus, and 654,000 years for annoyance in the European
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