Environmental Impact Assessment of Noise Quality: A Health Based Study of Firozabad City (India)

Problem of noise pollution is not new for common people, especially in industrial towns and metropolitan cities. Noise pollution can damage physiological and psychological health. Environmental Impact Assessment is an important tool in re-orienting development process toward more sustainable forms. The present paper assesses the noise quality status of different activity areas of Firozabad city (India) through purposive selection of sampling sites, one each from different activity areas viz. industrial, residential and commercial by measuring ‘Leq ’i.e., "A" weighing filter at a height of receptor organ i.e., 1.5 meters above the ground. The paper also examines the occurrence of health outcomes in the households of Firozabad city obtained through field survey conducted in 2012–2013 which shows that speech interference (37.75), annoyance (42.16%) and physiological changes (28.97) are most frequently reported health problems by the respondents which shows positive correlation between noise pollution due to traffic and due to industries at 0.01 &0.05 level of significance with varying degree of (r) values as well as Noise level at all the monitoring locations is found higher than the prescribed limit. The paper is concluded with few remedial strategies.