Using burden of disease or harmful effect assessments for quantifying health impacts from environmental noise?

Abstract

Commission Directive (EU) 2020/367 describes how harmful effects may be calculated for ischemic heart disease (IHD), high annoyance (HA), and high sleep disturbance (HSD) for road, rail, and aircraft noise. However, traditionally the negative health impacts of environmental noise have been assessed using the WHO's Burden of Disease methodology. In terms of evaluating how harmful effects and burden of disease methodologies compare in terms of the requirements for calculation, interpretation of results, practical application, and suitability for measuring the negative health impacts of environmental noise, our analysis suggests that the EU's harmful effects assessment may be a superior methodology because: 1) the harmful effect methodology is more efficient, less health data is necessary, and it requires less calculation; 2) for assessment that requires the application of national incidence statistics, results can be obtained for spatially localised areas as opposed to overall national figures; and 3) results from harmful effect assessment may be easier to interpret. However, it must also be emphasised that the pervasive application of burden of disease assessment means that comparative analysis with non-noise-induced disease states is possible, whilst this is not possible with harmful effect assessment.