New Indicators for the Assessment and Prevention of Noise Nuisance

Dear Colleagues, 

The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health welcomes submissions for a Special Issue of the journal, focused on new indicators for the assessment and prevention of noise nuisance. 

At present, health effects induced by prolonged noise exposure are widely studied for the most diffused noise sources and their effects. Annoyance, sleep disturbance, cardiovascular diseases and learning impairments, are already known through environmental epidemiology studies. Usually, these studies relate the health effects of noise with a regression of an acoustic exposure metrics, which is an average energetic dose over a long time period, such as Leq or Lden. 

Recently, the scientific community started to investigate the possibility that health effects induced by prolonged noise exposure should be studied considering other features of noise too. Among those remarkable effects are its intensity variation over time, impulsivity of events, frequency distribution, and psychoacoustics parameters. Peak levels, maximum levels, and variability can have a significative influence on nuisance perception, and citizens can complain more about single high levels rather than average exposure. This can be the origin of flaws in dose–effects relationships for annoyance or sleep disturbance. 

The subject deserves more attention and, therefore, this Special Issue seeks papers focused on studying new metrics, indicators or evaluation methods for noise exposure and its correlation with annoyance or other health effects, thus not relying only on the average exposure to noise.

Dr. Luca Fredianelli
Prof. Dr. Peter Lercher
Prof. Dr. Gaetano Licitra 
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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