One in five Europeans exposed to noise pollution levels above EU limits

25/04/2017

The year 2017 marks an important year for noise regulation in EU member countries. Following recommendation from the European Environment Agency(EEA), the European Commission has spent two years reviewing the Environmental Noise Directive (END, 2002/49/EC) aimed at reducing noise pollution with a harmful impact on the health of people, the economy and the environment.

For this reason on Monday 24 April, two days before the International Noise Awareness Day, the EEA Executive Director presented a report in Brussels on the state of noise pollution in Europe (2007-2012) at the "Noise in Europe" International Conference.The report is based on the research conducted by the INTERFASE group of the Department of Geography of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). The conference, organised by the European Commission, aimed to work on policies which could better combine accessibility to transport and a healthy life and included organisations such as the WHO and environmental authorities from all member countries.

At the same time, UAB researchers have taken advantage of the 1st Week Without Noise (SSS, for its initials in Catalan) organised by the Government of Catalonia, to share online information on the analysis of the data presented, as members of the network of experts of the European Topic Centre for Air Pollution and Climate Change Mitigation (ETC/ACM), one of the five EEA satellite consortiums in charge of environmental topics (ETCs).

According to the EEA report, noise has a harmful implication for 31.7 million adults and causes sleeping disorders in over 13 million people, in addition to 72,000 hospitalisations and 16,600 premature deaths each year. This data reflects the impact noise pollution has on the health of people depending on the level of decibels: from discomfort to stress, disease and finally death. It is estimated that at least 100 million Europeans - one in every five - are exposed to noise levels which surpass EU limits: 55 dB Lden (decibels measured during 24 hours and adjusted to different sensitivities during the morning, afternoon and night). In general, the Mediterranean region is where citizens are exposed to noise pollution to a greater extent.

Ambient noise pollution is produced mainly by road traffic, although air traffic and industries are also an important source of pollution. Cities in Spain were not the most efficient in improving noise levels between the 2007-2012 period, and researchers will have to wait until next year to analyse the 2012-2107 period in order to consider whether this tendency has changed. In 60% of the cities there was an increase in number of people exposed to road noise between the years 2007 and 2012, in contrast to 35% of all other European cities analysed. However, there was an overall improvement in the cases of acoustic disturbances caused by air traffic, which was successfully reduced by 95% in all Spanish airports.

With regards to Catalonia, the data collected until now confirms that its cities follow the same trend as the rest of Spain: there is an increase in noise levels. In contrast, Barcelona's airport has been able to reduce the level of air traffic noise despite the fact that the amount of air traffic has risen considerably.

Measuring and Mitigating Environment Noise

The impact of noise is more difficult to measure than air pollution, despite it sharing the same sources of emission, because it depends on other factors such as building isolation. Administrative competences which directly affect the management of data also overlap: for example, a motorway can change administration when entering a city, but environment noise can continue at the same level if there are no physical barriers or abrupt changes. This is partly due to the reason that noise pollution has had less "resonance" than other environmental issues at institutional level.

With the implementation of the END in 2002, EU member states committed themselves to apply mitigation measures and provide data on their cities, roads and airports every five years. After a period of adaptation, the END became law in 2007 in all cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Since 2002, different municipalities have taken on initiatives to lower the exposure of its inhabitants to urban noise and that of the main roads. According to EEA findings, the regulation of noise pollution is relatively inexpensive for administrations and is an efficient tool with which to improve the health of Europeans. “The most effective policies are those tackle the problem of noise pollution together with other sectors such as air quality and territorial planning”, explains Jaume Fons Esteve, ETC-ACM delegate at the Department of Geography of the UAB.

The ETC-ACM analysts at the UAB have played an important role in contributing to the EEA noise monitoring of the 2007-2012 period, and next year will update the information with data from 2017. For the past decade, the INTERFASE group manages noise pollution data for all of Europe and supplies it to the NOISE service belonging to the EEA environment and information network Eionet. In coordination with the EEA and the Environment Directorate General of the European Commission, the technicians work to guarantee the quality of noise pollution data provided by each of the countries in compliance with END requirements, and analyses the current situation of environment noise at European level. RIVM also collaborates closely by providing the studies on the impact of noise pollution to the health of the population. Among other things, monitoring and sharing information on noise is essential when evaluating the efficacy of action plans aimed at mitigating the effects of noise pollution, and also facilitates the exchange of knowledge among members of the Eionet network and national and international experts.