Abstract
Environmental noise is an important public health problem, being among the top environmental risks to health. The burden of noise exposure seems to be unequally distributed in societies. Up to now there is fragmentary evidence regarding which social groups are most affected. The aim of this review was to systematically assess published evidence on social inequalities in environmental noise exposure in the WHO European Region, taking different sociodemographic and socioeconomic dimensions as well as subjective and objective measures of environmental noise exposure into account. Articles published in English in a peer reviewed journal between 2010 and 2017 were included in the review. Eight studies were finally included in the review, four of them analysed aggregated data and four analysed individual data. Though results of social inequalities in noise exposures were mixed between and within studies, there was a trend that studies using indicators of material deprivation and deprivation indices showed higher environmental noise exposures in groups with lower socioeconomic position. More research on the social distribution of environmental noise exposure on a small spatial scale is needed, taking into account aspects of vulnerability and procedural justice.
Highlights
Environmental noise, defined as noise emitted from all sources except industrial workplaces [1], is an important public health problem
Evidence obtained with this review will be part of an update of the report “Environmental Health Inequalities in Europe”, which has been published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Europe in 2012 [23]
This review examined social inequalities in environmental noise exposure in the WHO European
Summary
Environmental noise, defined as noise emitted from all sources except industrial workplaces [1], is an important public health problem. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) noise is the top environmental risk to health [2]. It affects human health and well-being negatively and is a growing concern among both the general public and policy-makers in Europe. Noise acts as a nonspecific stressor that has an adverse effect on human health, especially following long-term exposure. These health effects are the result of physiological and psychological distress, as well as a disturbance of the organism’s homeostasis and increasing allostatic load [3]. The EU Noise Directive [5], which is in place since 2002, aims to prevent and reduce environmental noise where necessary and to preserve environmental noise quality where it is good
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