Systematic review of evidence of the effect of transport noise interventions on human health : Implications for future studies and noise management policy

Van Kamp and Brown (2016) systematically reviewed transport noise interventions, providing an evidence base of studies that examined association between interventions and changes in health outcomes. The findings: that most interventions result in changes in health outcomes, and that changes in annoyance for road and aircraft noise are at least of the magnitude predicted from relevant exposure-response functions (ERFs) support policies of noise management interventions. Outcome differences between different types of interventions could not be examined. Annoyance ERFs for road and aircraft noise provide at least a starting point for the health impact assessment of future interventions., but interventions also generally resulted in excess responses changes in annoyance that were greater than predicted by the relevant ERF. Possible explanations for this excess response phenomenon have different implications for policy. Various system-wide issues may also be associated with interventions though these had not been considered in the studies reviewed. The review showed that diverse intervention study designs, methods of analyses, exposure levels, and changes in exposure, restricted the analysis of findings. Further studies of transport interventions should be based on a protocol of measuring change in exposures, outcomes and confounders, not just change in noise levels.