Evaluating the health benefits of natural sounds: an approach for assessing the environmental impacts of transportation noise
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2012-08-19
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Abstract:Excessive anthropogenic noise has been associated with annoyance, disruption of sleep and cognitive processes, hearing impairment, and adverse impacts on cardiovascular and endocrine systems. Although transportation is a major source of noise, national policy in the U.S. has de-emphasized noise control efforts at the federal level and as a result, research and regulation of noise sources has lagged compared to that of other important environmental pollutants. But as global population and urbanization continue to grow at unprecedented rates, noise control and research will warrant increased attention if development is to proceed in concert with sustainable development principles. Adding to the development challenge are the limitations of current noise impact assessment practice, wherein the incremental effects of anthropogenic noise insults are often studied in isolation and are based on subjective measures, which introduces difficulty in teasing out individual or cumulative impacts. To address these problems, a new research approach is proposed, which seeks instead to characterize the underlying value of the acoustical environment being intruded upon by exploring the health benefits of natural sounds through a comprehensive program based on objective, physiological outcomes. Rooted in well-established methodology common to environmental health and clinical research, a proposed study methodology is outlined within the context of addressing noise impacts from commercial air tours over national parks, but may have broader applicability to clinical, occupational, and other environmental health analysis research areas.
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