In view of the new WHO guidelines for Community Noise, a concept is proposed on deriving environmental noise standards on the basis of response-exposure relationships. WHO’s guidelines have set definite guideline values for specific health effects and for specific environments. The WHO guidelines emphasize that exposure-response relationships between politically relevant variables (such as noise-induced social handicap, reduced productivity, decreased performance, absenteeism, drug use, and accidents) could definitely help decision makers to set sensible standards. In the standard-setting procedure, five different risks occur as part of any decision on the value of a standard. Three of these arise from the generalization of statements on susceptible sub-populations to be protected, on adverse effects of noise, and on boundary conditions of epidemiological studies. These risks cannot be quantified. One of the remaining two quantifiable risks is that of wrong measurements, which results from the quality of measurement techniques. The fifth risk relates to the acceptable probability of the occurrence of effects due to noise. With respect to the latter, governments have to fix an acceptable risk value in the standards-setting process. The consequences of combining these risks to a total risk are discussed.