Residential Road Traffic Noise Research Articles

Road Traffic Noise Exposure And Myocardial Infarction - A Novel Approach

The aim of this research was to study the risks for myocardial infarction associated with long term exposure to residential road traffic noise exposure using refined epidemiological methods (The ROM study). To control for potential risk factors, a large Swedish population-based case-control study (Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Program [SHEEP]) of first-time myocardial infarction was used for the investigation. Road traffic noise exposure was calculated for a total of 7,700 addresses from 1970 and onwards. A novel approach to assess individual noise exposure over several decades was used to study the relation between longitudinal traffic noise exposure and myocardial infarction.

Neighborhood soundscapes: Measurement and identification issues

The term neighborhood soundscape has been coined to describe the amount of road traffic noise in the immediate neighborhood of a dwelling. A simple indicator of how much the road traffic noise level in the neighborhood exceeds the noise level at the dwelling has been developed using a geographical information system. By applying the indicator with data from several socio-acoustic surveys it has been shown that people living in a relatively noisy neighborhood are significantly and substantially more annoyed than follows from the residential road traffic noise level alone. However, this does not prove that the heightened annoyance is caused by the noise exposure in the neighborhood. Neighborhood road traffic also gives rise to traffic insecurity and local air pollution, and indicators of these environmental exposures are additional possible effect modifiers. To separate the different positively correlated modifying effects, it is therefore not enough to measure the neighborhood soundscape, but also measure relevant aspects of the environscape. To statistically separate the different modifying effects requires that the respective measures are sufficiently precise. To go beyond the purely statistical associations it is also necessary to link each measure to the respective psychscape impacts and model the relevant parts of the psychscape.