Environmental noise assessment and its effect on human health in an urban area

Traffic noise is a major environmental source of pollution in the whole planet, both in developed and in developing nations. The present study focuses on the traffic noise assessment and its negative health effect on road side residents. Five different locations were selected along a National Highway of Burdwan having a day time Leq level of 60 to 89.5 dBA. Evaluation of various noise descriptors such as L₁₀, L₅₀, L₉₀, L_eq, L_NP and TNI showed that people of the study area got suffered from slight uncomfortable feeling to a position of noise annoyance. Assessment of health effects among the 52 peoples of 10 families residing in the study areas for long time was conducted through a questionnaire based survey. Responses from the people were collected for analysis and the outcome revealed that 53%,36%,40% of people were suffered from headache, anxiety and high blood pressure whereas 36%, 15%, 67% and 61% of people were suffered from hearing disability, cardiovascular diseases, irritability and insomnia respectively. Chi-Square test was conducted among the different physiological and psychological effects and it was found that noise has a significant (a = 0.05) effect on hearing loss, sleep disturbances, abnormal heart beat and speech communication problem.