WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region - What is New? 3. Guideline recommendations and supporting evidence - What is new?

The Guidelines include recommendations on transportation noise (air, road, rail), leisure noise and wind turbine noise, focussing on the exposure-response functions for the assessment of health impacts, and/or noise exposure levels above which there is an increased risk of adverse health effects. They also include a recommendation of measures to be implemented by policy makers in order to reduce adverse effects of exposure to environmental noise in the population. General considerations and best practice statements that apply to the implementation of all specific recommendations are also provided. WHO has adopted internationally recognized standards and methods for guideline development to ensure that guidelines are free from biases and meet public health needs. Building on the GRADE approach, a specific decision making framework has been developed to assess the quality of evidence of the relationship between source-specific environmental noise and health outcomes. The approach is also used to agree on factors influencing the recommendations, namely certainty about harms and benefits, values and preferences, as well as feasibility and resource implications. Based on these dimensions, the strength of the recommendation is set as either "strong" or "conditional".