Systematic Review of Evidence of the Effect of Transport Noise Interventions on Human Health: Implications for Future Studies and Management

Van Kamp and Brown (this conference) systematically reviewed transport noise interventions. This provided an evidence base of studies that quantified association between interventions and changes in health outcomes, but diverse study designs, methods of analyses, exposure levels, and changes in exposure, prohibit meta-analysis of the findings. Further studies of transport interventions are required and should be based on a protocol of measuring change in exposures, outcomes and confounders, not just change in noise levels. Findings from the overview of individual studies: that most interventions result in changes in human health outcomes, and that changes in annoyance for road and aircraft noise are at least of the magnitude predicted from relevant exposure-response functions (ERFs) - support policy and planning for future interventions - though outcome differences between intervention types could not be examined. Annoyance ERFs for road and aircraft noise provide at least a starting point for the health impact assessment of future interventions. But many intervention also resulted in excess annoyance responses - changes greater than predicted by ERFs. Different potential explanations for this excess response phenomenon have different implications for policy. Various system-wide issues may also be associated with interventions but had not been considered in the studies reviewed.