First Steps in the Development of the new WHO Evidence Review on Noise Annoyance
Invited paper
Ruhr-University Bochum
Tuesday 2 june, 2015, 16:40 - 17:00
0.4 Brussels (189)
Abstract:
WHO published Guidelines for Community Noise in 1999, and Night Noise Guidelines for Europe in 2009, and was asked to provide recent scientific evidence and recommendations for policy-makers of the Member States of the European Region. Following a strict protocol, WHO asked external experts to provide reviews for 8 topics: Cardiovascular diseases, Sleep disturbance, Hearing Impairment and tinnitus, Annoyance, Mental health effects and well-being, Birth outcomes, Combined exposures, and Intervention effects. This paper describes the outline and protocol of the procedures used for the evidence review in general, as well as the special results of the literature search and systematic review on noise annoyance with respect to aircraft, road traffic, railway, wind turbine, and combined source noise. At the time of writing this abstract, the work is not completely done, but it can already be seen that there are differences between former and recent exposure-response relations in the fields of aircraft, and railway noise annoyance.