Testing of the European Union exposure-response relationships and annoyance equivalents model for annoyance due to transportation noises: The need of revised exposure-response relationships and annoyance equivalents model

Environ Int. 2016 Sep:94:83-94. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2016.04.027. Epub 2016 May 22.

Abstract

An in situ survey was performed in 8 French cities in 2012 to study the annoyance due to combined transportation noises. As the European Commission recommends to use the exposure-response relationships suggested by Miedema and Oudshoorn [Environmental Health Perspective, 2001] to predict annoyance due to single transportation noise, these exposure-response relationships were tested using the annoyance due to each transportation noise measured during the French survey. These relationships only enabled a good prediction in terms of the percentages of people highly annoyed by road traffic noise. For the percentages of people annoyed and a little annoyed by road traffic noise, the quality of prediction is weak. For aircraft and railway noises, prediction of annoyance is not satisfactory either. As a consequence, the annoyance equivalents model of Miedema [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004], based on these exposure-response relationships did not enable a good prediction of annoyance due to combined transportation noises. Local exposure-response relationships were derived, following the whole computation suggested by Miedema and Oudshoorn [Environmental Health Perspective, 2001]. They led to a better calculation of annoyance due to each transportation noise in the French cities. A new version of the annoyance equivalents model was proposed using these new exposure-response relationships. This model enabled a better prediction of the total annoyance due to the combined transportation noises. These results encourage therefore to improve the annoyance prediction for noise in isolation with local or revised exposure-response relationships, which will also contribute to improve annoyance modeling for combined noises. With this aim in mind, a methodology is proposed to consider noise sensitivity in exposure-response relationships and in the annoyance equivalents model. The results showed that taking into account such variable did not enable to enhance both exposure-response relationships and the annoyance equivalents model.

Keywords: Annoyance equivalents model; Combined noises; Exposure-response relationship; Multilevel regression; Noise annoyance; Transportation noise.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Aircraft
  • Automobiles
  • Cities
  • Environmental Exposure / adverse effects*
  • European Union
  • France
  • Humans
  • Middle Aged
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Noise, Transportation / adverse effects*
  • Railroads
  • Young Adult