Abstract
This systematic review commissioned by the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), considers how the evidence base for noise effects on health has changed following the recent reviews undertaken for the WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines. This systematic review assesses the quality of the evidence for environmental noise effects on mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life; birth and reproductive outcomes; and cognition for papers published since the WHO reviews (mid-2015 to March 2019), as well as for cancer and dementia (January 2014 to March 2019). Using the GRADE methodology (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) most evidence was rated as low quality as opposed to very low quality in the previous reviews. There is now low-quality evidence for a harmful effect of road traffic noise on medication use and interview measures of depression and anxiety and low quality evidence for a harmful effect of road traffic noise, aircraft noise, and railway noise on some cancer outcomes. Many other conclusions from the WHO evidence reviews remain unchanged. The conclusions remain limited by the low number of studies for many outcomes. The quantification of health effects for other noise sources including wind turbine, neighbour, industrial, and combined noise remains a research priority.
Highlights
The publication of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region was accompanied by a number of systematic evidence reviews detailing the strength of the evidence for the effects of environmental noise on annoyance [1], sleep [2], cardiovascular health [3]; birth and reproductive outcomes [4]; cognition [5]; and mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life [6], amongst others
This paper reports the methodology and findings of systematic reviews that assess the quality of the evidence for the effect of environmental noise on mental health, wellbeing and quality of life; birth and reproductive outcomes; dementia and other neurodegenerative conditions; and cognition for papers published since the WHO reviews
This systematic review has assessed the quality of the evidence across the available studies for aircraft noise exposure, road traffic noise exposure, and railway noise exposure on a range of health outcomes including mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life; cancer; dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders; birth and reproductive outcomes; and cognition
Summary
The publication of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region was accompanied by a number of systematic evidence reviews detailing the strength of the evidence for the effects of environmental noise on annoyance [1], sleep [2], cardiovascular health [3]; birth and reproductive outcomes [4]; cognition [5]; and mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life [6], amongst others. These influential systematic reviews of the strength of the evidence informed the setting of the WHO guidelines. Public Health 2020, 17, 393; doi:10.3390/ijerph17020393 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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