 | How loud is too loud when you're asleep? | |
 One in five Europeans is regularly exposed to sound levels at night that could have a significant impact on his or her health. A new WHO publication provides evidence of the damage night noise can do to people’s health and offers guidelines for sound levels at night in Europe. | ||
| How many people are affected by noise? | |
| Noise and sleep | |
| Aircraft noise and health | |
| Children, noise and health | |
| Noise and housing | |
Noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people's daily activities at school, at work, at home and during leisure time. Traffic noise alone is harming the health of almost every third European. One in five Europeans is regularly exposed to sound levels at night that could significantly damage health.
The WHO Children's Environment and Health Action Plan for Europe states that children should be protected from exposure to harmful noise at home and at school. The 2002 European Union Directive on the assessment and management of environmental noise requires EU Member States to establish action plans to control and reduce the harmful effects of noise exposure. The 2009 night noise guidelines for Europe provide both evidence and recommendations that countries can easily use to introduce targeted limits for night noise.
WHO/Europe reviews the evidence on main health effects of noise and identifies the needs of specific vulnerable groups. Working in close co-operation with other WHO programmes we develop indicators and guidelines for noise and health, analyse exposure-response relationships for different health effects and study the long-term effects of night exposure to noise such as long-term sleep disturbance and cardiovascular problems.
