Community surveys have found that high percentages of people reported ‘headaches’, ‘restless nights’, and ‘being tense and edgy’ in high-noise areas.

Noise exposure and psychological symptoms

- Early studies found associations between the level of aircraft noise and psychiatric hospital admission rates both in London and Los Angeles, but this has not been convincingly confirmed by more recent studies.

- Environmental noise seems to be linked to psychological symptoms but not to clinical psychiatric disorder. However, there may be a link to psychiatric disorder at much higher noise levels.

Noise and common mental disorder

- The most widespread and well documented subjective response to noise is annoyance, which may include fear and mild anger, related to a belief that one is being avoidably harmed.

- In both traffic and aircraft noise studies, noise levels have been found to be associated with annoyance in a dose–response relationship.

Noise annoyance

Mental ill-health also increases annoyance. 

Syracuse University

Non-auditory effects of noise on health: 

- Noise and sleep disturbance

- Noise exposure and performance

- Noise and cardiovascular disease

- Endocrine responses to noise

- Noise and psychiatric disorder

- Combined effects of noise exposure and other stressors

- Noise and non-auditory health effects in children

Noise pollution: non-auditory effects on health

Stansfeld, S. A., &amp; Matheson, M. P. (2003). Noise pollution: Non-auditory effects on health. British Medical Bulletin, 68(1), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldg033 

Reference- Noise pollution: non-auditory effects on health

- Noise exposure during sleep may increase blood pressure, heart rate and finger pulse amplitude as well as body movements. 

- Perceived sleep quality, mood and performance in terms of reaction time all decreased following sleep disturbed by road traffic noise. 

- Studies on noise abatement show that, by reducing indoor noise level, the amount of REM sleep and slow wave sleep can be increased

Noise and sleep disturbance

- Performance may be impaired if speech is played while a subject reads and remembers verbal material, although this effect is not found with non-speech noise.

- Noise exposure may also slow rehearsal in memory, influence processes of selectivity in memory, and choice of strategies for carrying out tasks.

-  There is also evidence that noise may reduce helping behavior, increase aggression and reduce the processing of social cues seen as irrelevant to task performance.

Noise exposure and performance

It focuses three main aspects: 

- Physiological responses to noise exposure

- Occupational studies: noise and high blood pressure

- Noise and cardiovascular disease in the community

Noise and cardiovascular disease

- The general pattern of endocrine responses to noise is indicative of noise as a stressor, exciting short-term physiological responses.

- Exposure to high intensity noise in industry has been linked in some studies to raised levels of noradrenaline and adrenaline. 

- Some studies have shown raised cortisol in relation to noise. 


Endocrine responses to noise

Noise and psychiatric disorder

Noise effects on health may be augmented by, or in turn may augment, the impact of other stressors on health. Stressors may act synergistically, antagonistically or not at all.

Combined effects of noise exposure and other stressors

Children are still developing both physically and cognitively, there is a possible risk that exposure to noise may have irreversible negative consequences for them

- Cognition

- Motivation

- Cardiovascular effects

- Endocrine disturbance

- Noise annoyance

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