PROCEEDINGS of the
23rd International Congress on Acoustics
9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany

Environmental noise guidelines implementation in Poland
Anna PREIS1
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland

ABSTRACT
Directive 2002/49/EC (END) article 6(3) states that “harmful effects may be assessed by means of doseeffect relations referred to in ANNEX III”. The dose-effect relations could be used to assess the effect ofnoise on populations. In particular, it is possible for a given value of noise index, like Lden of a given noise
source, to predict the percentage of people who will be highly annoyed by this noise. The WHO
environmental noise guidelines document presents the recommended Lden values for five different noise
sources which when applied could prevent people from five harmful health effects. The recommendations
presented in the WHO guidelines are based on the does-effect relations for high annoyance and high sleep
disturbance and on formulas for ischaemic heart disease and stroke. It seems natural that this material could
be implemented in the revised version of ANNNEX III in the END. Right now the Noise Committee isworking on the new version on ANNEX III and to my knowledge reaction of different members of EU isdifferent. In this presentation I will show how it looks like in Poland.
Keywords: WHO - Noise guidelines, ANNEX III

1.

INTRODUCTION

The main purpose of the Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region (1) is to provide
recommendations for protecting human health from exposure to environmental noise originating fromvarious sound sources. EU Member States agreed that recommendations from these guidelines should beobserved in constructing the revision of ANNEX III of the Environmental Noise Directive (END). The
recommendations introduced in the working version of ANNEX III (2) refer only to noise produced bythree kinds of transportation sources: road traffic, railway and aircraft. The recommended Lden values forthese three environmental sound sources could prevent people from specified four harmful health effects:
ischaemic heart disease, stroke, high annoyance and high sleep disturbance. Such harmful effects may beassessed by means of dose-effect relations presented in WHO document, as well as, in the ANNEX III(Equations (3) to (20)).
The basic aim of ANNEX III is to define the best assessment method for calculating the number ofpeople affected by noise produced by various transportation sound sources. The proposed methods arequantitative and are designed to calculate separately the number of inhabitants exposed to each of the threekinds of transportation noise. These calculated values can later be ranked according to the relative
importance of a particular noise source.
In sum, ANNEX III contains methods allowing to calculate the number of people affected by threenoise sources with respect to four harmful effects. However, the guidelines neglect the data informing
about the population structure of the considered urban area. Therefore it is not possible to calculate therelationship between the number of affected people and their living conditions. For example, theregulations in ANNEX III do not allow to relate a given place in a city to highly annoyed people exposed toroad traffic. Such data are important in constructing an efficient action plan which recommends means toreduce noise in a given area in a city under consideration. The higher the number of highly annoyed peoplein a given area the more vital is the action towards reduction of noise. Since ANNEX III is still unfinishedit should be decided if it should focus on a general or a more specific solution. The first, general approach
will consist in proposing methods allowing to calculate the total number of highly annoyed people in awhole city. In such a case, one has to answer the question how these calculations can be used inconstructing an efficient action plan? The second, specific approach will demand much more work, but17126

apraton@amu.edu.plwould be easier to implement.

2.

Methodological problems in a working version of the Annex III document

Before ANNEX III will be established as a law in noise management some important methodologicalproblems should be addressed. I will discuss one of them.
The document assumes that harmful effects of noise causing an increase in the risk of ischaemic heartdisease (IHD), as well as an increase in the risk of stroke (STR), can be quantified by the relative risk. This
assumption can be presented in the form of the following equation:
𝑃𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑑
𝑅𝑅 =(1)𝑃𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑑
where RR is the probability of an event occurring (e.g. developing a disease) in an exposed group to theprobability of the event occurring in the non-exposed group. The RR values are calculated for each noise
source separately.
The calculations of RR for a given harmful effect and noise source require to insert in the equation (1)the specific values of Lden at which risk of IHD or STR starts. An example of such specified equation for
the incidence rate of the IHD for road traffic is:exp((𝑙𝑛1.08/10) ∗ (𝐿𝑑𝑒𝑛 − 53)) 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐿𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 53 𝑑𝐵
𝑅𝑅𝐼𝐻𝐷,𝑖,𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑 {}(2)
1𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐿𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 53 𝑑𝐵
Values for another noise sources and harmful effects could be calculated without problems. The
problem arises when we want to calculate the number of people affected by given harmful effect caused byparticular noise source - 𝑁𝑥,𝑦 . To perform these calculations we need data of incidence rate, Ly andmortality rate, My:
𝑁𝑥,𝑦 = 𝑃𝐴𝐹𝑥,𝑦,𝑖 ∗ 𝐿𝑦 ∗ 𝑃(3)𝑁𝑥,𝑦 = 𝑃𝐴𝐹𝑥,𝑦,𝑚 ∗ 𝑀𝑦 ∗ 𝑃(4)where PAFx,y is the population attributable fraction, P is the total population of the area under assessment(the sum of the population in the different noise bands).
These data should be obtained from statistics on health region or country where the area is. However, insome countries (e.g. in Poland) such data are difficult or even not possible to obtain.
This problem does not exist when it comes to two other harmful effects: high annoyance (HA) and highsleep disturbance (HSD). These harmful effects can be quantified by the absolute risk (AR) defined as:“Occurrence of the harmful effect in a population exposed to a specific level of environmental noise”.
There are well known equations for three different noise sources which can be used for the quantification ofhigh annoyance (HA). An example used for road noise is presented in Eq. 5.
𝐴𝑅𝐻𝐴,𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑 = (78,9270 − 3,1162 ∗ 𝐿𝑑𝑒𝑛 +), 0342 ∗ 𝐿2𝑑𝑒𝑛 )/100)(5)
Similar equations could be applied to high sleep disturbance (HSD). The example used in calculation ofroad noise is presented in Eq.6.
𝐴𝑅𝐻𝑆𝐷,𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑 = (19,4312 − 0,9336 ∗ 𝐿𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 + 0,02126 ∗ 𝐿2𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 )/100(6)For HA and HSD the total number N of people affected by the harmful effect y (number of attributablecases) due to the source x is derived (for each combination of noise source x (road, railway, aircraft) andharmful effect y (HA, HSD)) by the following equation:
𝑁𝑥,𝑦 = ∑ ( 𝑛𝑗 ∗ 𝐴𝑅𝑗,𝑥,𝑦) )𝑗(7)where ARx,y is the absolute risk of specific harmful effect (HA, HSD) and nj is the number of people thatare exposed to the j-th exposure band of noise.
What needs clarification is the decision which approach to choose: general or specific. What should becalculated: the number of affected people for the whole city or the number for a given area in the city. If
the second option would be chosen the question remains how to specify the area studied.

3.
The current, legally recommended in Poland, method of calculation of
the number of people affected by noise
Noise maps in Poland are calculated for five noise sources separately: tram, railway, road, aircraft andindustry noise. In addition, the map for each noise source has several layers with different noise levelrecommendations. Within each layer the places (expressed in a number of people in a given layer - m)where the recommended Lden value is exceeded are identified. For these places the difference (∆L)
between the actual Lden value and the recommended one is calculated. These parameters are input values
for the equation for index M, which is related to the number of people exposed to a given noise source:

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(8)
𝑀 = 0,1𝑚(100,1∆𝐿 − 1)
The difficulty in calculating index M is that there are no rules how to relate its value to the different
areas. As can be seen from equation (8) neither the number of people exposed to a given noise source nor
the dose –response relationship for different harmful effects are calculated.

4.

Environmental noise guidelines implementation in Poland

In my opinion, the environmental noise guidelines can currently be implemented in Poland in a limited
form, only for two harmful effects: high annoyance (HA) and high sleep disturbance (HSD).
To assess the actual number of (HA) or (HSD) people in the studied area it is recommended to use local
exposure response function (ERF) (the exposure response function was earlier called dose-response
relationship). However, in Poland such data are not available. In such case the generalized ERFs can beapplied. The new acoustic map for Poznan constructed along these lines is presently calculated. The final
results of these new calculations will be compared to the M values calculated earlier.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Author would like to thank Piotr Kokowski, Michał Gałuszka and Paweł Libiszewski for criticalcomments and advice.

REFERENCES
1. Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region. World Health Organization 2018, ISBN 97892 890 5356 3.
2. ANNEX III on the establishment of assessment methods for the harmful effects of noise according toDirective 2002/49/EC -working version of the document, 2019.

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