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Environmental noise means that emitted from sources such as road traffic, trains, and aircraft. Noise causes or contributes to not only annoyance and sleep disturbance but also heart attacks, learning disabilities and tinnitus. Preliminary results of a multinational pilot project estimating the environmental burden of disease (EBD) in Europe have shown that the EBD for noise is second in magnitude only to that from air pollution.

WHO/Europe's guidance presents enhanced approaches for assessing the risk of environmental noise, developed with a network of experts on the basis of current knowledge. 

At the international level, figures on the health impact of environmental noise are scarce in the European Region. An international study, coordinated by WHO/Europe and supported by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), estimated that traffic-related noise accounts for over 1 million healthy years of life lost annually to ill health, disability or early death in western European countries. In south-eastern Europe and central Asia, a lack of exposure data inhibits estimates of the extent of health effects, pointing at the need for better surveillance and data collection.

The study, aiming to quantify the burden of disease from environmental noise, reviewed the evidence on health effects, developed guidance to quantify risks from environmental noise and estimated the burden of disease in some European countries.