Road traffic noise and annoyance: a quantification of the effect of quiet side exposure at dwellings.

Previous studies indicate that residents may benefit from a "quiet side" to their dwellings. The influence of the level of road traffic noise exposure at the least exposed side on road traffic noise annoyance was studied in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Road traffic noise exposure was assessed at the most and least exposed façade (Lden,most and Lden,least respectively) of dwellings for subjects in a population based survey (N = 1,967).

A comparison between exposure-response relationships for wind turbine annoyance and annoyance due to other noise sources.

Surveys have shown that noise from wind turbines is perceived as annoying by a proportion of residents living in their vicinity, apparently at much lower noise levels than those inducing annoyance due to other environmental sources. The aim of the present study was to derive the exposure-response relationship between wind turbine noise exposure in L(den) and the expected percentage annoyed residents and to compare it to previously established relationships for industrial noise and transportation noise. In addition, the influence of several individual and situational factors was assessed.

Urban road traffic noise and annoyance: the effect of a quiet façade.

Road traffic noise in urban areas is a major source of annoyance. A quiet façade has been hypothesized to beneficially affect annoyance. However, only a limited number of studies investigated this hypothesis, and further quantification is needed.

Trends in aircraft noise annoyance: the role of study and sample characteristics.

Recently, it has been suggested that the annoyance of residents at a given aircraft noise exposure level increases over the years. The objective of the present study was to verify the hypothesized trend and to identify its possible causes. To this end, the large database used to establish earlier exposure-response relationships on aircraft noise was updated with original data from several recent surveys, yielding a database with data from 34 separate airports.

Annoyance from environmental noise across the lifespan.

Curvilinear effects of age on self-reported annoyance from environmental noise were investigated in a pooled international and a Dutch sample of in total 62,983 individuals aged between 15 and 102 years. All respondents were frequently exposed to varying levels of transportation noise (i.e.

Habitual traffic noise at home reduces cardiac parasympathetic tone during sleep.

The relationships between road and rail traffic noise with pre-ejection period (PEP) and with respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during sleep, as indices of cardiac sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system tone, were investigated in the field (36 subjects, with 188 and 192 valid subject nights for PEP and RSA, respectively). Two analyses were conducted. The first analysis investigated the overall relationships across the entire sleep period.

Disagreement between subjective and actigraphic measures of sleep duration in a population-based study of elderly persons.

Sleep duration is an important concept in epidemiological studies. It characterizes a night's sleep or a person's sleep pattern, and is associated with numerous health outcomes. In most large studies, sleep duration is assessed with questionnaires or sleep diaries.

Associations between self-reported sleep disturbance and environmental noise based on reanalyses of pooled data from 24 studies.

This study establishes functions that specify self-reported sleep disturbance in relation to the exposure to nighttime transportation noise, by reanalyzing pooled data from previous studies. Results are based on data from 28 original datasets obtained from 24 field studies (4 studies collected data regarding 2 sources) including almost 23,000 participants exposed to nighttime levels ranging from 45 to 65 dB. Functions are presented that give the percentage highly sleep disturbed, sleep disturbed, and (at least) a little sleep disturbed people due to aircraft, road traffic, and railway noise in relation to the average nighttime outdoor exposure level at the facade most exposed to the source concerned.

Effect of season and meteorological conditions on community noise annoyance.

More than 80 000 residents' responses to transportation noise from 42 studies conducted at different times of year provide statistical estimates of the effects of season and meteorological conditions on community response to noise. The strongest evidence for a seasonal effect comes from 7 years of continuous daily interviewing of nationally representative probability samples in the Netherlands. Long-term annoyance with noise is slightly, but statistically significantly, higher in the summer than in the winter.

Noise annoyance from stationary sources: relationships with exposure metric day-evening-night level (DENL) and their confidence intervals.

Relationships between exposure to noise [metric: day-evening-night levels (DENL)] from stationary sources (shunting yards, a seasonal industry, and other industries) and annoyance are presented. Curves are presented for expected annoyance score, the percentage "highly annoyed" (%HA, cutoff at 72 on a scale from 0 to 100), the percentage "annoyed" (%A, cutoff at 50 on a scale from 0 to 100), and the percentage "(at least) a little annoyed" (%LA, cutoff at 28 on a scale from 0 to 100). The estimates of the parameters of the relations are based on the data from a field study (N=1875) at 11 locations (2 shunting yards, 1 seasonal industry, 8 other industries) in the Netherlands.

Noise sensitivity and reactions to noise and other environmental conditions.

This article integrates findings from the literature and new results regarding noise sensitivity. The new results are based on analyses of 28 combined datasets (N = 23,038), and separate analyses of a large aircraft noise study (N = 10,939). Three topics regarding noise sensitivity are discussed, namely, its relationship with noise exposure, its working mechanism, and the scope of its influence.