Western Europeans suffer a heavy toll of death and disability through exposure to excessive noise, making it second only to air pollution as an environmental cause of ill health.

That’s the conclusion of the world’s first comprehensive report on the health effects of noise, published this week by the World Health Organization and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

Between them, western Europe’s inhabitants – with an estimated adult population in 2001 of 340 million – were found to lose as much as 1.6 million years of healthy living per year. The authors reduced the headline figure to 1 million to rule out the possibility of double counting. “We are very confident that a million is the bottom line,” says co-author Rok Ho Kim, who coordinates the WHO’s noise programme.

The toll from air pollution is estimated at 4.5 million years of healthy living lost per year. “No other environmental hazard comes anywhere near these two,” says Kim.


Deadly noise

The most dramatic effects are in heart disease, because exposure to noise can kill people. Altogether, Europeans are estimated to lose a total of around 61,000 years of healthy life annually through noise-associated heart disease, and suffer an estimated 3000 deaths, Kim says.

Noise has been shown to raise blood pressure and blood-borne concentrations of stress hormones and fatty materials even when people are asleep. These can accumulate over time to block blood vessels and trigger a heart attack.

Although heart disease is the most serious cause of death from noise, the largest single impact on health is through sleep disturbance, which deprives Europeans of an estimated 903,000 years of healthy living annually.

Next comes annoyance – which impairs people’s well-being even if it has no direct impact on health – with a corresponding figure of 587,000 years, followed by learning deficits among schoolchildren estimated at 45,000, and tinnitus with 22,000.

Cap on noise

“Considering the overall impact, I think this really puts noise on a footing where it needs to be taken seriously,” says Deepak Prasher, who studies the effects of noise on heart health at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, UK. “Governments need to acknowledge that it is a problem.”

Kim says that the European Commission has already set guideline maximum levels for night-time noise of 40 decibels. “That’s about the same noise you would get in a library,” he says.

In countries of eastern Europe that have joined the EU more recently, the level has been set slightly higher, at 55 decibels, to allow them to adapt.

The researchers collaborating on the report are still gathering data to set limits averaged across 24 hours. These need to be ready by 2013, when the revised version of Europe’s 2002 Noise Directive is due.

Quieter vehicles

In the meantime, Kim says that there are three levels of action that can be taken. The first priority is to make cars, trains and planes quieter, as this reduces noise pollution at source.

The second is for city authorities to install noise barriers between busy roads and residential areas, or site the roads well away from them. Another possibility is to fit low-noise tyres or high-pore road surfaces, which Kim describes as “amazingly quiet”.

Finally, individual noise-reducing measures such as installing double-glazing to cut out noise should be subsidised.

Kim says that European Union is the first major economic region to take serious action on noise. The US is lagging about a decade behind: President Ronald Reagan abolished the Environmental Protection Agency’s noise programme in 1982 and it has never been resurrected. Members of the US Congress are currently organising a seminar on the topic.