Future noise policy: European commission green paper

Environmental noise, caused by traffic , industrial and recreational activities is one of the main local environmental problems in Europe and the source of an increasing number of complaints from the public. Generally, however, action to reduce environmental noise has had a lower priority than that taken to address other environmental problems such as air and water pollution. The 1993 Fifth Environmental Action Programme started to remedy this and included a number of basic targets for noise exposure to be reached by the year 2000, while the recent proposal on the review of the Fifth Action Programme (COM(95)647) announces the development of a noise abatement programme for action to meet these targets. This GreenPaper is the first step in the development of such a programme and aims to stimulate public discussion on the future approach to noise policy. It reviews the overall noise situation and Community and national action taken to date. The review is followed by the outline of a framework for action covering the improvement of information and its comparability as well as future options for the reduction of noise from different sources.