Anyone who lives above a nightclub, studies under an airport flight path or works next to a busy highway knows how detrimental noise pollution can be – lost sleep, difficulty concentrating and increased levels of stress are just some of the obvious side effects. However, there are possibly even more serious – and, until now, less evident – consequences of being exposed to excessive noise.

Increasingly clear connections between noise pollution and high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, strokes and a range of other ailments have been highlighted in a broad and far-reaching evaluation of the effects of noise on health by researchers working in the EU-funded ENNAH project.

By establishing a network of 33 European research centres in 16 countries, the ENNAH team was able to consolidate and evaluate a large amount of research from across Europe on the effects of noise pollution. Their work has resulted in some of the most comprehensive information to date about the long- and short-term social and health effects of exposure to excessive noise.

Through a series of seven workshops held across Europe, the researchers laid out guidelines for further research and raised awareness of the issue with the aim of influencing future policy.

“Noise pollution has long been considered a factor in sleep disturbances and as a source of annoyance, and while some action has been taken by European authorities and policy-makers to limit citizens’ exposure to noise, the problem has not usually been seen as a priority compared to other environmental issues,” explains ENNAH project coordinator Stephen A. Stansfeld at the Queen Mary University of London.

For example, around 20% of the EU population, or almost 80 million people, are currently estimated to be regularly subjected to unacceptable noise levels, despite the implementation of legislation aimed at cutting noise pollution levels, among them the EU’s 2002 Environmental Noise Directive.

Encouraging policymakers to act

“If clear scientific facts linking noise to serious health risks are established, it should make politicians sit up and act,” Stansfeld says.

Those facts are starting to emerge, in part thanks to EU-funded research. For example, the HYENA project, which involved many of the ENNAH partners, identified connections between traffic and aircraft noise and cardiovascular health. And the RANCH project, an ENNAH precursor, found that children in schools exposed to high levels of aircraft noise had much poorer reading comprehension.

By carrying out secondary data analysis on those and many other studies, the ENNAH team has been able to build up more complex analytical models on noise and health effects, lead efforts to standardise the measurement of health outcomes relevant to noise research and strengthen the available methodologies for future research. They also looked at the combined effects of air and noise pollution – particularly relevant for people living in cities or near busy roads – and have led efforts for noise pollution to be factored into air pollution research.

“The ENNAH network has undoubtedly raised awareness among researchers and policymakers about the impact of noise on health and quality of life. Wider knowledge of these effects can help in planning new buildings, especially sensitive buildings such as schools or hospitals, and can help those designing noise producing machinery to take this into account as an important human factor that needs to be considered,” Stansfeld says.

Many of the ENNAH partners are continuing to work together on different research projects related to noise and health, and members of the consortium are currently looking to develop new research calls within the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.