Abstract
Noise pollution is a growing problem across the world and one which many people may not be aware of the impacts on their health. The environmental noise, and in particular the road traffic noise, remains a major environmental problem affecting the health and well-being of millions of people. With this background, a comprehensive ‘noise pollution assessment study’ was undertaken for a busy traffic corridor of Ahmedabad city of India. The traffic corridor which spans around 22.25 km passes through a mix of different areas like educational, commercials and residential. A two week long field survey was carried out on this corridor during 10-23 May, 2018 at 24 locations spread over the entire corridor. The assessment reveals that the average noise level always exceeded the prescribed guidelines of World Health Organization (WHO) for the daytime noise (75 dB (A) for Industrial area, 65 dB (A) for Commercial area, 55 dB (A) for Residential area and 50 dB (A) for Silence zones), which is quite alarming. For a major portion of the traffic corridor (79.6%), even the minimum noise level was above the permissible average noise level which is a matter of great concern. The highest noise level observed was 86.0 dB (A). Clubbing the ranks of the traffic corridor segments for the noise indicators like LAeq, Lmin, Lmax, L90, L50, L10 and LNP revealed that locations like Akhbarnagar followed by Naranpura were in the nosiest. Looking to implications of the high noise levels on the human health and productivity, it is important to initiate suitable mitigation measures. The present comprehensive study brings forth the spatial and quantitative aspects of noise pollution across the busy corridor of the city which would be of great help to the civic administration in understanding the magnitude of the problem and subsequently initiate suitable mitigative measures.
Highlights
Noise is one of the major urban pollutants affecting the majority of streets of modern cities[1,2] and environmental noise pollution has been a growing worldwide problem over the past few years.[3]
Looking to the impact of noise pollution on the human health and the increasing trend of the noise pollution, numerous studies have been planned around the world which focuses on various aspects of noise such as noise characteristics: sampling strategy,[17,18] sources,[19,20] etc
A database of the observed sound pressure levels (SPL) was made subsequently noise indicators like mean A- weighted sound pressure level (LAeq), minimum noise level (Lmin), maximum noise level (Lmax), sound level exceeding for 90% of the sampling time (L90) often related to the background noise level, sound level exceeding for 50% of the sampling time (L50) which is statistically the mid-point of the noise readings, sound level exceeding for 10% of the sampling time (L10)
Summary
Noise is one of the major urban pollutants affecting the majority of streets of modern cities[1,2] and environmental noise pollution has been a growing worldwide problem over the past few years.[3]. As it is important to estimate the population exposed to the varying noise levels, many studies have been attempted using models like Sound PLAN.[21,22,23] CadnaA,[24,25] LimA,[26] TRANEX,[27] MITHRA-SIG,[28] EMPARA.[29] Many researchers undertook field studies across the world like Tonkin, France,[30] Tehran city,[31] Gwalior, India,[32] Ahmedabad, India,[33] Visakhapatnam, India,[34] Rangareddy, India,[35] Hyderabad, India,[36] Kota, India,[37] China[38] for assessing the noise pollution and reported their findings using noise indicators like LAeq, Lmin, Lmax, L90, L50, L10, Traffic Noise Index (TNI), NC (Noise Climate) and many others
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