Updating the WHO guidelines on community noise

Abstract

Adverse health effects of community noise are a growing concern in many countries. To provide evidence-based policy guidance to the member states, the World Health Organization published Guidelines for Community Noise (1999), Night Noise Guidelines for Europe (2009), and Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise (2011). The Parma Declaration on Environment and Health (2010) urged WHO to develop guidelines on noise suitable to reduce children's exposure to noise, including that from personal electronic devices, recreation and traffic, especially in residential areas, at child care centres, kindergartens, schools and public recreational settings. Accordingly, the Noise Guideline Development Group (NGDG) was convened for renewing the WHO guidelines on community noise. The new guidelines, to be finalized by 2013, will reflect newly available evidence on adverse health effects of community noise from various sources. Newly emerged issues such as windmill noise and neighbourhood noise will be addressed. The whole process from formulation of the topics and choice of the relevant outcomes, evidence retrieval, assessment and synthesis through systematic review, to formulation of the recommendations will follow the standard WHO guidelines for guidelines development to eliminate any potential conflict of interests by ensuring the highest level of transparency and accountability.