Systematic Review of meta-analyses for noise

In the context of constructing a burden of disease toolkit for noise exposures in England, we sought to identify meta-analyses to provide exposure-response coefficients that would update those available from the WHO Noise Guidelines for the European Region published in 2018. We conducted a systematic review of systematic reviews relating to noise exposure and selected health outcomes published in 2017-20. We used the AMSTAR checklist to score all selected systematic review papers at the same time as data extraction. A new review needed to have at least a moderate score on AMSTAR to be recommended as an alternative/update to the WHO analyses. Twenty-three papers were included in the review, of which 11 studies provides quantitative effects estimates. Eight considered environmental noise associations with metabolic outcomes, seven with mental health outcomes, six with cardiovascular outcomes, and five studies systematically reviewed on wellbeing, sleep, and annoyance. We recommend one new meta-analysis on diabetes and one on hypertension, plus a further new meta-analysis on IHD to be considered for use in place of the WHO systematic review. Our review also suggested there are now enough papers available to conduct a future new meta-analysis for noise and dementia.