Seven months is the lifespan in good health lost by a person residing in the Paris agglomeration. Road, rail and air noise are responsible for this.
Between the whirring of the engines and the horns, the road noise in theParisian agglomeration (Ile-de-France) is a real problem. If we add to that the planes and the rail traffic, the Ile-de-France residents sometimes have the impression of finding calm only during their escapades in the provinces.
And this life in the crash unfortunately weighs on the well-being of the inhabitants. Health dangers have already been mentioned in numerous studies (risk of stroke, weight gain, etc.). These were even quantified in a study (1) published a few days ago.
In fact, in order to quantify the health impacts of transport noise within the Parisian agglomeration, the Île-de-France regional health observatory and Bruitparif were based on the DALY (disability-adjusted life years) quantification method proposed by the World Health Organization. This allows the burden of disease to be assessed using the quantitative indicator of “healthy years of life lost”.
Sleep, the first victim
In total, 75,000 years of healthy life would be lost each year in the Paris area. The main health effect of exposure to environmental noise corresponds to sleep disorders, which alone accounts for more than 44,000 DALYs, or 59% of the years lost. Discomfort is the second health effect with nearly 30,000 years of good health lost.
Road noise is the main source of morbidity. Indeed, with a total of 63,000 DALYs, road noise alone accounts for 84% of the estimates of loss of years of healthy life in the Paris area.
On the air transport side, the authors of the work are more cautious and call for the assessments made on the impact of airplanes (which only represents 7% of DALYs) to be taken with caution. “The use of the indicator alone is not sufficient to transcribe the exposure of the population to noise sources of an event-related nature such as air traffic”.
A little over seven months per capita
In addition, the study made it possible to estimate the inconvenience caused to an average individual due to their level of chronic exposure to transport noise during their lifetime. The evaluations carried out give a statistical value of 7.3 months on average per individual, this value being able to reach of the order of two years for the people most strongly exposed to transport noise.
As a reminder, in July 2015, a senatorial commission of inquiry estimated the annual economic cost of air pollution in France at at least 100 billion euros.
The same is true in Europe, where 125 million European citizens suffer from noise pollution linked to transport. This nuisance is responsible for 43,000 hospitalizations each year, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA).
(1) The estimates of the years of healthy life lost due to noise are based on the use of exposure data consolidated by Bruitparif from the first noise maps produced by the some 209 competent authorities in the Paris area. .
Mapping of road noise in Île-de-France during the day (Source: Bruitparif)
Mapping of road noise in Île-de-France at night (Source: Bruitparif)
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