Abstract

In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published new environmental noise guidelines. These guidelines are intended to assist policymakers and professionals in reducing the negative health effects of noise, such as sleep disturbance and annoyance. The WHO guidelines are also based on the latest insights into the relationship between exposure to noise and the probability of health effects occurring due to noise, such as annoyance or cardiovascular disease. These are referred to as exposure-response relationships.

In June 2020, RIVM published a report on the consequences of the new WHO guidelines for noise in the living environment would have for Dutch policy. On the request of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water management, RIVM now provides a more detailed explanation of how it reached certain conclusions. Both studies focused primarily on annoyance and other health effects resulting from the noise of road, rail, and aviation traffic.

One of the conclusions is that noise from rail traffic is more annoying and is more likely to result in sleep disturbance than previously thought. It also turns out that more serious health effects, such as cardiovascular diseases, can occur at a lower exposure than previously thought. This insight leads to the conclusion that a larger number of persons develop cardiovascular diseases as a result of noise than previously thought.