Aviation Noise Impacts: State of the Science; Noise & Health, April 17, 2017
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ABSTRACT: Noise is defined as “unwanted sound.” Aircraft noise is one, if not the most detrimental environmental effect of aviation. It can cause community annoyance, disrupt sleep, adversely affect academic performance of children, and could increase the risk for cardiovascular disease of people living in the vicinity of airports. In some airports, noise constrains air traffic growth. This consensus paper was prepared by the Impacts of Science Group of the Committee for Aviation Environmental Protection of the International Civil Aviation Organization and summarizes the state of the science of noise effects research in the areas of noise measurement and prediction, community annoyance, children’s learning, sleep disturbance, and health. It also briefly discusses civilian supersonic aircraft as a future source of aviation noise.
PURPOSE: The goal of this review is to briefly summarize the current state of scientific knowledge regarding the adverse effects of aircraft noise emissions on the public. Every effort has been made to base the findings upon peer-reviewed publications, carefully reviewed by specialists from around the world. The topics addressed here are community annoyance, children’s learning, sleep disturbance, health impacts, and the noise of supersonic aircraft. Appendix A [Additional file 1] additionally provides some background information on noise measurement and prediction as well as technical definitions for the interested reader.
TASK OF THE PANEL: Aircraft noise discussions can be very emotional, and politicians and legislators often struggle to define limit values that both protect the population against the adverse effects of aircraft noise but do not restrict the positive societal effects of air traffic. Noise effects researchers have an important advisory role. They derive so-called exposure–response functions that allow health impact assessments and, therefore, inform political decision-making. The efforts of the Noise Panel were directed at assessing the current state of the science and provide contracting states with a brief overview of the impacts of aircraft noise on communities. This white paper constitutes a consensus among its authors, who have considerable experience in noise effects research, and is based on input from an international expert panel workshop held on February 10 and 11, 2015 in Alexandria, VA, USA. Noise effects depend, among others, on housing structure and cultural values, and legislation and limit values accordingly differ considerably between contracting states. Therefore, the authors did not try to suggest specific limit values, but rather pointed to existing exposure–response functions and recommendations of international organizations.
CONCLUSIONS: There is substantial evidence that aircraft noise exposure is associated with annoyance indicators, and exposure–response relationships have been derived to estimate the expected percentage of highly annoyed persons at a community level. Still, several personal and situational factors importantly affect the annoyance of individuals. Recent evidence for an increase in the annoyance response at a given exposure level indicates the need for updating exposure–response curves based on recent studies using harmonized methods, as well as verifying the circumstances leading to a heightened community response. This could inform political decision-making on managing aircraft noise exposure and on mitigation measures.