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Article Contents

Introduction, supplementary data, ethics approval and consent to participate, data availability.

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Environmental noise exposure and health outcomes: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analysis

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Xia Chen, Mingliang Liu, Lei Zuo, Xiaoyi Wu, Mengshi Chen, Xingli Li, Ting An, Li Chen, Wenbin Xu, Shuang Peng, Haiyan Chen, Xiaohua Liang, Guang Hao, Environmental noise exposure and health outcomes: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analysis, European Journal of Public Health , Volume 33, Issue 4, August 2023, Pages 725–731, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad044

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Environmental noise is becoming increasingly recognized as an urgent public health problem, but the quality of current studies needs to be assessed. To evaluate the significance, validity and potential biases of the associations between environmental noise exposure and health outcomes.

We conducted an umbrella review of the evidence across meta-analyses of environmental noise exposure and any health outcomes. A systematic search was done until November 2021. PubMed, Cochrane, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase and references of eligible studies were searched. Quality was assessed by AMSTAR and Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE).

Of the 31 unique health outcomes identified in 23 systematic reviews and meta-analyses, environmental noise exposure was more likely to result in a series of adverse outcomes. Five percent were moderate in methodology quality, the rest were low to very low and the majority of GRADE evidence was graded as low or even lower. The group with occupational noise exposure had the largest risk increment of speech frequency [relative risk (RR): 6.68; 95% confidence interval (CI): 3.41–13.07] and high-frequency (RR: 4.46; 95% CI: 2.80–7.11) noise-induced hearing loss. High noise exposure from different sources was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (34%) and its mortality (12%), elevated blood pressure (58–72%), diabetes (23%) and adverse reproductive outcomes (22–43%). In addition, the dose–response relationship revealed that the risk of diabetes, ischemic heart disease (IHD), cardiovascular (CV) mortality, stroke, anxiety and depression increases with increasing noise exposure.

Adverse associations were found for CV disease and mortality, diabetes, hearing impairment, neurological disorders and adverse reproductive outcomes with environmental noise exposure in humans, especially occupational noise. The studies mostly showed low quality and more high-quality longitudinal study designs are needed for further validation in the future.

Environmental noise, an overlooked pollutant, is becoming increasingly recognized as an urgent public health problem in modern society. 1 , 2 Noise pollution from transportation (roads, railways and aircraft), occupations and communities has a wide range of impacts on health and involves a large number of people. 2–6 It is reported that environmental noise exposure may affect human health by influencing hemodynamics, hemostasis, oxidative stress, inflammation, vascular function and autonomic tone. 7–11 Prolonged noise exposure can cause dysregulation of sleep rhythms and lead to adverse psychological and physiological changes in the human body such as distress response, behavioral manifestations, cardiovascular (CV) disease and mortality, etc. 12–19 It is reported that environmental noise is second only to air pollution as a major factor in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost in Europe. 20

There have been many epidemiological studies and systematic reviews assessing the effects of environmental noise on health, but the quality of the evidence included in these reviews varies due to subjective or inconsistent evaluation criteria. Therefore, it is hard to contextualize the magnitude of the associations across health outcomes according to current reviews. To comprehensively assess the significance, validity and potential biases of existing evidence for any health outcomes associated with environmental noise, we performed an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. 21 The results may provide evidence for decision-makers in clinical and public health practice.

Search strategy

The umbrella review search followed the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. 22 We searched systematic reviews and meta-analyses of observational or interventional studies studying the relationship between noise exposure and any health outcome from PubMed, Cochrane, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase databases to November 2021 ( Supplementary tables S1 and S2 ). Pre-defined search strategy as follows: noise AND (systematic review* or meta-analysis*). Two researchers (X.C. and M.L.) independently screened qualified literature, and we also manually searched the references of qualified articles. Any discrepancies were resolved by a third investigator for the final decision (L.Z.).

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Researches meeting the following criteria have been included: (1) Systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses of observational studies (cohort, case–control and cross-sectional studies) or interventional studies [randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental studies]. (2) The exposure or intervention of meta-analysis and/or systematic reviews is ‘noise’. We ruled out the following research: (1) Outcome is not a health outcome, such as students’ examination scores. (2) Meta-analysis and/or systematic reviews only evaluated the combined effects of noise exposure and other risk factors on health outcomes and it is not possible to extract the separate effect of noise.

Data extraction

Four researchers (X.C., M.L., L.Z. and X.W.) independently extracted data from each eligible systematic review or meta-analysis. We extracted the following data from original articles: name of the first author; publication time; research population; type of noise and measurement method(s); the dose of noise exposure; study types (RCTs, cohort, case–control studies or cross-sectional); the number of studies included in the meta-analysis; the number of total participants included in each meta-analysis; the number of cases included in each meta-analysis; estimated summary effect (OR, odds ratio; RR, relative risk; HR, hazard ratio), with the 95% confidence intervals (CIs). We also extracted the type of effect model, publication bias by Egger’s test, dose–response analyses, I 2 , information on funding and conflict of interest. Any disagreement in the process of data extraction was settled through group discussion.

Quality of systematic review and strength of evidence

AMSTAR 2 is a measurement tool to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews by 16 items. 23 The quality of the method was divided into four grades: ‘high’, ‘moderate’, ‘low’ and ‘very low’.

For the quality of evidence for each outcome included in the umbrella review, we adopted the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) to make recommendations and to classify the quality of evidence. 24 The baseline quality of evidence is determined by the research design. The quality of evidence decreases when there is a risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision or publication bias in the article, while it can be elevated when there is the presence of magnitude of effect, plausible confounding and dose–response gradient. 25 The quality of evidence can also be divided into four levels: ‘high’, ‘medium’, ‘low’ or ‘very low’.

Data analysis

Noise exposure was divided into six types: (1) transportation noise (combined road, railway or aircraft noise); (2) road noise; (3) railway noise; (4) aircraft noise; (5) occupational noise and (6) combined noise (two or more kinds of noise above or wind turbine noise, etc.). We divided the results into: (1) mortality; (2) CV outcome; (3) metabolic disorders; (4) neurological outcomes; (5) hearing disorder; (6) neonatal/infant/child-related outcomes; (7) pregnancy-related diseases and (8) others. When a systematic review and/or meta-analysis includes different exposures or outcomes, we extracted the data for each of the different types of exposure and health outcomes, respectively. When two or more systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses had the same exposure and health results, we selected the recently published research with the largest number of studies included.

The associations across studies were commonly measured with RR (or OR and HR). We recalculated the adjusted pooled effect values and corresponding 95% CIs by using the random-effects model by DerSimonian and Laird, 26 which takes into account heterogeneity both within and between studies. And all results were reported by RRs for simplicity in our study.

Based on I 2 statistics and the Cochrane Q test, we evaluated the heterogeneity of each study. 27 Due to I 2 being dependent on the study size, we therefore also calculated τ 2 , which is independent of study size and describes variability between studies concerning the risk estimates. 28 Publication bias was estimated by Egger’s test. 29 Pooled effects were also reanalyzed in articles that included only cohort studies in the sensitivity analysis.

Patient and public involvement

No patients contributed to this research.

Features of meta-analysis

Our initial systematic retrieve recognized 5617 studies from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane and Scopus. The search finally yielded 64 meta-analyses of observational research in 23 articles with 31 unique outcomes after excluding duplicates or irrelevant articles, 30– 52 and no interventional study was identified. Figure 1 shows the flow diagram of the literature search and study selection. The distribution of health outcomes from noise exposure is displayed in Supplementary figure S1 . Most meta-analyses focused on road noise (16 meta-analyses) and the incidence of CV events (18 meta-analyses).

Study flowchart

Most of the findings presented were expressed in terms of highest to lowest noise exposure, and statistically significant associations of noise exposure were identified with CV mortality and incidence of diabetes, elevated blood pressure (BP), CV disease, speech-frequency noise-induced hearing loss (SFNIHL), high-frequency noise-induced hearing loss (HFNIHL), work-related injuries, metabolic syndrome, elevated blood glucose, fetal malformations, small for gestational age, acoustic disturbance and acoustic neuroma. The associations of environmental noise exposure with the incidence of other outcomes [angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease (IHD), elevated triglyceride, obesity, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, perinatal death, preterm birth, gestational hypertension, spontaneous abortion and preeclampsia] were not statistically significant. Similarly, in dose–response analysis, statistical significance was achieved for harmful associations with CV mortality, stroke mortality, IHD mortality, non-accidental mortality and incidence of IHD, diabetes, anxiety, elevated BP, stroke, depression, work-related injuries, low birth weight, small for gestational age and preterm birth, whereas other outcomes were not significant.

Transportation noise

We identified four studies on transportation noise and health. 32 , 34 , 39 , 48 Transportation noise exposure might increase the risk of developing CV outcomes, metabolic disorders and neurological outcomes. Compared with individuals who had the lowest exposure to transportation noise, those with the highest exposure had a higher risk of diabetes (RR: 1.23; 95% CI: 1.10–1.38). 32 Dose–response analysis showed that an increase of 5 dB was associated with a 25% increase in diabetes risk. 39 When the noise exposure from transportation was per 10 dB increment, the risks of developing IHD 34 and anxiety 48 increased by 6% and 7%, respectively ( Supplementary figure S2 ).

Associations between road noise exposure and health outcomes. Co: cohort; CC: case control; CS: cross-sectional and NP: not provide

Eight studies focused on the associations between road noise and health. 30 , 35 , 38 , 39 , 43 , 46 , 47 , 50 The highest exposure to road noise, compared with the lowest exposure, was associated with increased risks of developing CV outcomes, including angina pectoris (RR: 1.23; 95% CI: 0.80–1.89), 30 myocardial infarction (RR: 1.06; 95% CI: 0.96–1.16), 47 CV disease (RR: 1.06; 95% CI: 0.96–1.18), 30 and IHD (RR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.79–1.27). 30 In the analysis of the dose–response relationship, the risk of incidence of diabetes increased by 7% for every 5 dB increase of road noise (RR: 1.07; 95% CI: 1.02–1.12). 39 Every 10 dB road noise increment could increase by 2–8% risk of mortality and incidence of diseases (including CV outcomes, neurological outcomes and neonatal-related outcomes), although the results did not reach statistical significance. The most significant harmful association was shown for stroke mortality (5%) 50 in mortalities, for elevated BP (2%) 35 , 38 in CV outcomes, for depression (2%) 46 in neurological outcomes and for low birth weight (8%) 43 in neonatal-related outcomes, but the estimates did not reach significance ( figure 2 ).

Railway noise

Three studies focused on railway noise 39 , 46 , 50 and the results did not show a significant association with any health outcome ( figure 3 ).

Associations between railway noise exposure and health outcomes. Co: cohort; CC: case control; CS: cross-sectional and NP: not provide

Aircraft noise

Six studies focused on aircraft noise and health. 30 , 33 , 39 , 44 , 46 , 50 Current evidence showed that aircraft noise exposure was associated with the risk of CV mortality, and incidence of elevated BP, stroke, diabetes and neurological outcomes. People exposed to aircraft noise had an elevated BP (RR: 1.63; 95% CI: 1.14–2.33), compared with those non-exposed. 33 A dose–response analysis demonstrated that stroke risk increased by 1% for every 10 dB increase of aircraft noise. The risk of diabetes increased by 17% for every 5 dB increase of aircraft noise (RR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.06–1.29). 39 With every 10 dB increase in noise, the risk of anxiety 50 and depression 46 increased by 22% and 14%, respectively. We did not find a significant association of aircraft noise exposure with other CV outcomes ( figure 4 ).

Associations between aircraft noise exposure and health outcome. Co: cohort; CC: case control; CS: cross-sectional and NP: not provide

Occupational noise

Eight studies focused on occupational noise, 32 , 36 , 37 , 42 , 45 , 49 , 52 , 53 and the study population of occupational noise exposure mainly came from workers in manufacturing, metals, transportation and mining. Occupational noise exposure increases the risk of mortality, and incidence of CV outcomes, hearing disorders and other diseases. The risk of SFNIHL was greatly attributed to occupational noise exposure (RR: 6.68; 95% CI: 3.41–13.07). 53 Similarly, those exposed to occupational noise showed an increased risk of CV disease (RR: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.15–1.56), 36 HFNIHL (RR: 4.46; 95% CI: 2.80–7.11), 53 and acoustic neuroma (RR: 1.26; 95% CI: 0.78–2.00), 42 compared with the non-exposed group. In addition, the highest exposed group had an increased risk of CV mortality (RR: 1.12; 95% CI: 1.02–1.24), 36 elevated BP (RR: 1.72; 95% CI: 1.46–2.01) 45 and work-related injuries (RR: 2.40; 95% CI: 1.89–3.04). 37 The risk of work-related injuries increased by 22% for every 5 dB increase in occupational noise (RR: 1.22; 95% CI: 1.15–1.29) 37 ( Supplementary figure S3 ).

Combined noise

We identified six studies that combined various noise sources. 31 , 39–41 , 51 , 52 The findings suggested that combined noise or other noise might increase the risk of developing CV disease, metabolic disorders, neonatal-related disease, pregnancy-related and hearing disorders. Hearing impairment was statistically different between the exposed and non-exposed groups. 41 , 42 Compared with the lowest exposure group, the most harmful association was shown for metabolic syndrome (27%) 51 in metabolic disorders, fetal malformations (43%) 31 in neonatal-related outcomes and gestational hypertension (27%) 31 in pregnancy-related outcomes. Dose–response analysis showed that an increase of 5 dB was associated with a 6% increase in diabetes risk. 39 ( Supplementary figure S4 ).

Sensitivity analysis

In the sensitivity analyses of cohort studies, the summary results of recalculating the associations between transportation, road, railway and occupational noise with multiple health outcomes remained similar ( Supplementary table S3 ).

Heterogeneity and publication bias

Heterogeneities across 62 meta-analyses were reanalyzed, of which 15 meta-analyses appeared high heterogeneity, 29 with low heterogeneity and 2 were not able to calculate heterogeneity due to a limited number of individual studies.

Most meta-analyses did not report significant publication bias or a statistical test for publication bias did not publish due to a limited number of studies included, except for the bias found in meta-analyses examining occupational noise and elevated BP.

AMSTAR and GRADE classification

Of the 64 meta-analyses, about 5% were rated as medium quality, 9% as low quality and the rest were graded as extremely low evidence, which was likely rooted in their failure to state that the review methods were established before the review or lack of explanation for publication deviation. The AMSTAR 2 details for every outcome are outlined in Supplementary table S4 . In terms of evidence quality, the majority (69%) were classified as extremely low-quality evidence due to the presence of risk of bias, inconsistency and publication bias or lack of statistical tests for publication bias ( Supplementary tables S5–S7 ).

Main findings and interpretation

Our umbrella review provides a comprehensive overview of associations between environmental noise and health outcomes by incorporating evidence from systematic reviews and meta-analyses. We identified 23 articles with 64 meta-analyses and 31 health outcomes, and no interventional study was identified. We found significant associations of environmental noise with all-cause mortality, and incidence of CV outcomes, diabetes, hearing disorders, neurological and adverse reproductive outcomes, whereas environmental noise was not associated with the beneficial effect of any health outcome.

Occupational noise is harmful to CV morbidity and mortality, and similar results were found for road noise, railway noise, aircraft noise, transportation noise and combined noise, but the former two did not reach statistical significance. It is worth mentioning that we found that most of the studies reported a harmful association of noise with elevated BP. 54 , 55 Noise can cause elevated BP and a range of CV-related diseases by activating the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system, 56 , 57 or by causing elevated stress hormones such as cortisol and catecholamines through sleep deprivation, 8 leading to vascular endothelial damage. 58 It has also been found that environmental noise, by inducing oxidative stress, 59 can also lead to CV dysfunction. 11 In line with current results, the following large cohort studies also reported that occupational and transportation noises were significantly associated with CV morbidity and mortality. 60–62

When analyzing the research on noise exposure and diabetes, we found that environmental noise was harmful to diabetes, except for occupational and railway noises. Quality assessments of studies with aircraft, road, traffic and combined noise exposure showed extremely low-quality levels. 32 , 39 Environmental noise is related to the stress response of human beings and animals, 63 and several studies have confirmed that impaired metabolic function is associated with chronic stress. 64 , 65 Furthermore, long-term exposure to noise increases the production of glucagon. 66 , 67 The following studies also found a null association between occupational noise 68 , 69 or railway noise with diabetes. 70 The non-significant results for railway noise exposure may be due partly to the limited studies and the low level of railway traffic noise compared with other traffic sources. 70 Different types of noise produced varying levels of annoyance, with aircraft noise being reported as the most annoying type of noise. 71 , 72 Protective equipment use, higher physical activity and healthy worker effects in occupationally exposed populations may account for our findings of invalidity in occupational noise exposure. This hypothesis is further supported by a 10-year prospective study that found that among people with occupational noise, those with high levels of physical activity had a lower risk of developing diabetes. 73 However, recent large cohort studies reported that occupational 74 and railway 75 noise exposure could increase the risk of diabetes by 35% and 2%, respectively.

There is little evidence of the influence of road or railway noise exposure on hearing loss. Noise exposure from occupation increases the risk of hearing disorders, especially occupational noise exposure was observed in our umbrella review. The occupational groups studied mainly come from workers in manufacturing, metals, transportation and mining. It is common for them to be even exposed to more than 85 dB of noise. 3 Some biological mechanisms can explain the damage caused by occupational noise exposure. Occupational noise exposure caused by mechanical injury may damage the hair cells of cortical organs and the eighth Cranial Nerve. 76 , 77 A series of experiments have demonstrated that exposure to high-intensity noise causes substantial neuronal damage, which in turn causes hearing loss. 78–83 Noise exposure may cause DNA errors in cell division by affecting mechanical damage repair, ultimately leading to cell proliferation disorders. 84 Meanwhile, some animal studies have shown that after noise exposure, free radicals that can cause DNA damage were found in vestibular ganglion cells. 85 , 86

The associations of noise exposure with adverse reproductive outcomes such as preeclampsia, preterm birth, perinatal death and spontaneous abortion are still inconclusive. Our analysis found that combined noise exposure significantly increased the risk of birth malformations, small gestational age and gestational hypertension. This is biologically plausible, dysregulation of the HPA axis due to psychological stress 87,88 induced by noise exposure has been shown to impair cortisol rhythms, 89 , 90 and corticosteroids across the placental barrier stimulate the secretion of adrenotropin-releasing hormone by the placenta, which is toxic to the embryo and leads to adverse reproductive outcomes. 91 , 92 However, the quality of evidence from studies on the relationship between the two was assessed as extremely low, the association of road noise with neonatal outcomes was not examined in our review. Danish national birth cohort reported that road traffic exposure was not associated with a higher risk of birth defects. 93 A systematic review found associations between road traffic noise and preterm birth, low birth weight and small gestational age, but the quality of evidence was low. 94

Although most of the current studies showed low quality, current evidence suggested a wide array of harmful effects of environmental noise on human health. Strategies such as limiting vehicle speed, reducing engine noise, building a sound barrier and reducing friction between the air and the ground could be adopted to reduce traffic noise. 11 For occupational noise, it is necessary to educate and train employees to recognize the awareness of noise hazards, equip them with hearing protection devices and monitor the noise exposure level in real-time. 95 , 96 A study summarizing the latest innovative approaches to noise management in smart cities found dynamic noise mapping, smart sensors for environmental noise monitoring and smartphones and soundscape studies to be the most interesting and promising examples to mitigate environmental noise. 97

Strengths and limitations

We systematically summarized the current evidence of noise exposure and multiple health outcomes from all published meta-analyses. We conducted a comprehensive search of five scientific literature databases, which ensures the integrity of literature search results. Two researchers screened the literature independently, then four researchers performed the data extraction. We used AMSTAR 2 as a measurement tool to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews and the GRADE tool to evaluate the quality of evidence. 23 , 25

There are some limitations in our umbrella reviews. All meta-analyses included in our umbrella reviews were observational studies, which led to lower evidence quality scores. The studies on occupational and railway noise exposure with some health outcomes were limited. In meta-analyses that we were unable to disentangle the noise types, the presented results were from the combined estimates of all included studies, so these results should be explained cautiously. The dose–response associations of environmental noise exposure with health outcomes should be further investigated.

In a nutshell, the umbrella review suggested that environmental noise has harmful effects on CV mortality and incidence of CV disease, diabetes, hearing impairment, neurological disorders and adverse reproductive outcomes. The results of railway noise are not yet fully defined. More high-quality cohort studies are needed to further clarify the effects of environmental noise in the future.

Supplementary data are available at EURPUB online.

This work was financially supported by the Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Clinical Epidemiology [grant number 2021ZNDXLCL002] and Program for Youth Innovation in Future Medicine, Chongqing Medical University [No. W0088].

Not applicable.

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Supplementary Material of this article.

Conflicts of interest : None declared.

The first umbrella meta-analysis of the relationship between noise and multiple health.

Environmental noise has harmful associations for a range of health outcome.

The impact of railway noise on health outcomes is inconclusive.

Most of the current studies showed low methodological and evidence quality.

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Author notes

• cardiovascular diseases
• cerebrovascular accident
• ischemic stroke
• diabetes mellitus, type 2
• depressive disorders
• noise, occupational
• pregnancy outcome
• arterial pressure, increased
• hearing loss
• health outcomes
• noise exposure

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• v.117(1); 2009 Jan

Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution

In 1879, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulbs first illuminated a New York street, and the modern era of electric lighting began. Since then, the world has become awash in electric light. Powerful lamps light up streets, yards, parking lots, and billboards. Sports facilities blaze with light that is visible for tens of miles. Business and office building windows glow throughout the night. According to the Tucson, Arizona–based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), the sky glow of Los Angeles is visible from an airplane 200 miles away. In most of the world’s large urban centers, stargazing is something that happens at a planetarium. Indeed, when a 1994 earthquake knocked out the power in Los Angeles, many anxious residents called local emergency centers to report seeing a strange “giant, silvery cloud” in the dark sky. What they were really seeing—for the first time—was the Milky Way, long obliterated by the urban sky glow.

None of this is to say that electric lights are inherently bad. Artificial light has benefited society by, for instance, extending the length of the productive day, offering more time not just for working but also for recreational activities that require light. But when artificial outdoor lighting becomes inefficient, annoying, and unnecessary, it is known as light pollution. Many environmentalists, naturalists, and medical researchers consider light pollution to be one of the fastest growing and most pervasive forms of environmental pollution. And a growing body of scientific research suggests that light pollution can have lasting adverse effects on both human and wildlife health.

When does nuisance light become a health hazard? Richard Stevens, a professor and cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Connecticut, says light photons must hit the retina for biologic effects to occur. “However, in an environment where there is much artificial light at night—such as Manhattan or Las Vegas—there is much more opportunity for exposure of the retina to photons that might disrupt circadian rhythm,” he says. “So I think it is not only ‘night owls’ who get those photons. Almost all of us awaken during the night for periods of time, and unless we have blackout shades there is some electric lighting coming in our windows. It is not clear how much is too much; that is an important part of the research now.”

According to “The First World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness,” a report on global light pollution published in volume 328, issue 3 (2001) of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , two-thirds of the U.S. population and more than one-half of the European population have already lost the ability to see the Milky Way with the naked eye. Moreover, 63% of the world population and 99% of the population of the European Union and the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) live in areas where the night sky is brighter than the threshold for light-polluted status set by the International Astronomical Union—that is, the artificial sky brightness is greater than 10% of the natural sky brightness above 45° of elevation.

Light pollution comes in many forms, including sky glow, light trespass, glare, and over illumination. Sky glow is the bright halo that appears over urban areas at night, a product of light being scattered by water droplets or particles in the air. Light trespass occurs when unwanted artificial light from, for instance, a floodlight or streetlight spills onto an adjacent property, lighting an area that would otherwise be dark. Glare is created by light that shines horizontally. Overillumination refers to the use of artificial light well beyond what is required for a specific activity, such as keeping the lights on all night in an empty office building.

Distracted by the Light

The ecologic effects of artificial light have been well documented. Light pollution has been shown to affect both flora and fauna. For instance, prolonged exposure to artificial light prevents many trees from adjusting to seasonal variations, according to Winslow Briggs’s chapter on plant responses in the 2006 book Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting . This, in turn, has implications for the wildlife that depend on trees for their natural habitat. Research on insects, turtles, birds, fish, reptiles, and other wildlife species shows that light pollution can alter behaviors, foraging areas, and breeding cycles, and not just in urban centers but in rural areas as well.

Sea turtles provide one dramatic example of how artificial light on beaches can disrupt behavior. Many species of sea turtles lay their eggs on beaches, with females returning for decades to the beaches where they were born to nest. When these beaches are brightly lit at night, females may be discouraged from nesting in them; they can also be disoriented by lights and wander onto nearby roadways, where they risk being struck by vehicles.

Moreover, sea turtle hatchlings normally navigate toward the sea by orienting away from the elevated, dark silhouette of the landward horizon, according to a study published by Michael Salmon of Florida Atlantic University and colleagues in volume 122, number 1–2 (1992) of Behaviour . When there are artificial bright lights on the beach, newly hatched turtles become disoriented and navigate toward the artificial light source, never finding the sea.

Jean Higgins, an environmental specialist with the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission Imperiled Species Management Section, says disorientation also contributes to dehydration and exhaustion in hatchlings. “It’s hard to say if the ones that have made it into the water aren’t more susceptible to predation at this later point,” she says.

Bright electric lights can also disrupt the behavior of birds. About 200 species of birds fly their migration patterns at night over North America, and especially during inclement weather with low cloud cover, they routinely are confused during passage by brightly lit buildings, communication towers, and other structures. “Light attracts birds and disorients them,” explains Michael Mesure, executive director of the Toronto-based Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP), which works to safeguard migratory birds in the urban environment. “It is a serious situation because many species that collide frequently are known to be in long-term decline and some are already designated officially as threatened.”

Each year in New York City alone, about 10,000 migratory birds are injured or killed crashing into skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, says Glenn Phillips, executive director of the New York City Audubon Society. The estimates as to the number of birds dying from collisions across North America annually range from 98 million to close to a billion. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates 5–50 million birds die each year from collisions with communication towers.

Turtles and birds are not the only wildlife affected by artificial nighttime lighting. Frogs have been found to inhibit their mating calls when they are exposed to excessive light at night, reducing their reproductive capacity. The feeding behavior of bats also is altered by artificial light. Researchers have blamed light pollution for declines in populations of North American moths, according to Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting . Almost all small rodents and carnivores, 80% of marsupials, and 20% of primates are nocturnal. “We are just now understanding the nocturnality of many creatures,” says Chad Moore, Night Sky Program manager with the National Park Service. “Not protecting the night will destroy the habitat of many animals.”

Resetting the Circadian Clock

The health effects of light pollution have not been as well defined for humans as for wildlife, although a compelling amount of epidemiologic evidence points to a consistent association between exposure to indoor artificial nighttime light and health problems such as breast cancer, says George Brainard, a professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “That association does not prove that artificial light causes the problem. On the other hand, controlled laboratory studies do show that exposure to light during the night can disrupt circadian and neuroendocrine physiology, thereby accelerating tumor growth.”

The 24-hour day/night cycle, known as the circadian clock, affects physiologic processes in almost all organisms. These processes include brain wave patterns, hormone production, cell regulation, and other biologic activities. Disruption of the circadian clock is linked to several medical disorders in humans, including depression, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, says Paolo Sassone-Corsi, chairman of the Pharmacology Department at the University of California, Irvine, who has done extensive research on the circadian clock. “Studies show that the circadian cycle controls from ten to fifteen percent of our genes,” he explains. “So the disruption of the circadian cycle can cause a lot of health problems.”

On 14–15 September 2006 the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) sponsored a meeting that focused on how best to conduct research on possible connections between artificial lighting and human health. A report of that meeting in the September 2007 issue of EHP stated, “One of the defining characteristics of life in the modern world is the altered patterns of light and dark in the built environment made possible by use of electric power.” The meeting report authors noted it may not be entirely coincidental that dramatic increases in the risk of breast and prostate cancers, obesity, and early-onset diabetes have mirrored the dramatic changes in the amount and pattern of artificial light generated during the night and day in modern societies over recent decades. “The science underlying these hypotheses has a solid base,” they wrote, “and is currently moving forward rapidly.”

The connection between artificial light and sleep disorders is a fairly intuitive one. Difficulties with adjusting the circadian clock can lead to a number of sleep disorders, including shift-work sleep disorder, which affects people who rotate shifts or work at night, and delayed sleep–phase syndrome, in which people tend to fall asleep very late at night and have difficulty waking up in time for work, school, or social engagements.

The sleep pattern that was the norm before the invention of electric lights is no longer the norm in countries where artificial light extends the day. In the 2005 book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past , historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Polytechnic Institute described how before the Industrial Age people slept in two 4-hour shifts (“first sleep” and “second sleep”) separated by a late-night period of quiet wakefulness.

Thomas A. Wehr, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, has studied whether humans would revert back to the two-shift sleep pattern if they were not exposed to the longer photoperiod afforded by artificial lighting. In the June 1992 Journal of Sleep Research , Wehr reported his findings on eight healthy men, whose light/dark schedule was shifted from their customary 16 hours of light and 8 hours of dark to a schedule in which they were exposed to natural and electric light for 10 hours, then darkness for 14 hours to simulate natural durations of day and night in winter. The subjects did indeed revert to the two-shift pattern, sleeping in two sessions of about 4 hours each separated by 1–3 hours of quiet wakefulness.

Beyond Sleep Disorders

Alteration of the circadian clock can branch into other effects besides sleep disorders. A team of Vanderbilt University researchers considered the possibility that constant artificial light exposure in neonatal intensive care units could impair the developing circadian rhythm of premature babies. In a study published in the August 2006 issue of Pediatric Research , they exposed newborn mice (comparable in development to 13-week-old human fetuses) to constant artificial light for several weeks. The exposed mice were were unable to maintain a coherent circadian cycle at age 3 weeks (comparable to a full-term human neonate). Mice exposed for an additional 4 weeks were unable to establish a regular activity cycle. The researchers concluded that excessive artificial light exposure early in life might contribute to an increased risk of depression and other mood disorders in humans. Lead researcher Douglas McMahon notes, “All this is speculative at this time, but certainly the data would indicate that human infants benefit from the synchronizing effect of a normal light/dark cycle.”

Since 1995, studies in such journals as Epidemiology, Cancer Causes and Control , the Journal of the National Cancer Institute , and Aviation Space Environmental Medicine , among others, have examined female employees working a rotating night shift and found that an elevated breast cancer risk is associated with occupational exposure to artificial light at night. Mariana Figueiro, program director at the Lighting Research Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, notes that permanent shift workers may be less likely to be disrupted by night work because their circadian rhythm can readjust to the night work as long as light/dark patterns are controlled.

In a study published in the 17 October 2001 Journal of the National Cancer Institute , Harvard University epidemiologist Eva S. Schernhammer and colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston used data from the 1988 Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), which surveyed 121,701 registered female nurses on a range of health issues. Schernhammer and her colleagues found an association between breast cancer and shift work that was restricted to women who had worked 30 or more years on rotating night shifts (0.5% of the study population).

In another study of the NHS cohort, Schernhammer and colleagues also found elevated breast cancer risk associated with rotating night shift work. Discussing this finding in the January 2006 issue of Epidemiology , they wrote that shift work was associated with only a modest increased breast cancer risk among the women studied. The researchers further wrote, however, that their study’s findings “in combination with the results of earlier work, reduce the likelihood that this association is due solely to chance.”

Schernhammer and her colleagues have also used their NHS cohort to investigate the connection between artificial light, night work, and colorectal cancer. In the 4 June 2003 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute , they reported that nurses who worked night shifts at least 3 times a month for 15 years or more had a 35% increased risk of colorectal cancer. This is the first significant evidence so far linking night work and colorectal cancer, so it’s too early to draw conclusions about a causal association. “There is even less evidence about colorectal cancer and the larger subject of light pollution,” explains Stevens. “That does not mean there is no effect, but rather, there is not enough evidence to render a verdict at this time.”

The research on the shift work/cancer relationship is not conclusive, but it was enough for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to classify shift work as a probable human carcinogen in 2007. “The IARC didn’t definitely call night shift work a carcinogen,” Brainard says. “It’s still too soon to go there, but there is enough evidence to raise the flag. That’s why more research is still needed.”

The Role of Melatonin

Brainard and a growing number of researchers believe that melatonin may be the key to understanding the shift work/breast cancer risk association. Melatonin, a hormone produced by the pineal gland, is secreted at night and is known for helping to regulate the body’s biologic clock. Melatonin triggers a host of biologic activities, possibly including a nocturnal reduction in the body’s production of estrogen. The body produces melatonin at night, and melatonin levels drop precipitously in the presence of artificial or natural light. Numerous studies suggest that decreasing nocturnal melatonin production levels increases an individual’s risk of developing cancer. [For more information on melatonin, see “Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health,” EHP 116:A160–A167 (2008).]

One groundbreaking study published in the 1 December 2005 issue of Cancer Research implicated melatonin deficiency in what the report authors called a rational biologic explanation for the increased breast cancer risk in female night shift workers. The study involved female volunteers whose blood was collected under three different conditions: during daylight hours, during the night after 2 hours of complete darkness, and during the night after exposure to 90 minutes of artificial light. The blood was injected into human breast tumors that were transplanted into rats. The tumors infused with melatonin-deficient blood collected after exposure to light during the night were found to grow at the same speed as those infused with daytime blood. The blood collected after exposure to darkness slowed tumor growth.

“We now know that light suppresses melatonin, but we are not saying it is the only risk factor,” says first author David Blask, a research scientist at the Bassett Healthcare Research Institute in Cooperstown, New York. “But light is a risk factor that may explain [previously unexplainable phenomena]. So we need to seriously consider it.”

The National Cancer Institute estimates that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some time during her life. We can attribute only about half of all breast cancer cases to known risk factors, says Brainard. Meanwhile, he says, the breast cancer rate keeps climbing—incidence increased by more than 40% between 1973 and 1998, according to the Breast Cancer Fund—and “we need to understand what’s going on as soon as possible.”

Linking Light Pollution to Human Health

The evidence that indoor artificial light at night influences human health is fairly strong, but how does this relate to light pollution? The work in this area has just begun, but two studies in Israel have yielded some intriguing findings. Stevens was part of a study team that used satellite photos to gauge the level of nighttime artificial light in 147 communities in Israel, then overlaid the photos with a map detailing the distribution of breast cancer cases. The results showed a statistically significant correlation between outdoor artificial light at night and breast cancer, even when controlling for population density, affluence, and air pollution. Women living in neighborhoods where it was bright enough to read a book outside at midnight had a 73% higher risk of developing breast cancer than those residing in areas with the least outdoor artificial lighting. However, lung cancer risk was not affected. The findings appeared in the January 2008 issue of Chronobiology International .

“It may turn out that artificial light exposure at night increases risk, but not entirely by the melatonin mechanism, so we need to do more studies of ‘clock’ genes—nine have so far been identified—and light exposure in rodent models and humans,” Stevens says. Clock genes carry the genetic instructions to produce protein products that control circadian rhythm. Research needs to be done not just on the light pollution–cancer connection but also on several other diseases that may be influenced by light and dark.

Travis Longcore, co-editor of Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting and a research associate professor at the University of Southern California Center for Sustainable Cities, suggests two ways outdoor light pollution may contribute to artificial light–associated health effects in humans. “From a human health perspective, it seems that we are concerned with whatever increases artificial light exposure indoors at night,” he says. “The effect of outdoor lighting on indoor exposure could be either direct or indirect. In the direct impact scenario, the artificial light from outside reaches people inside at night at levels that affect production of hormones. In an indirect impact it would disturb people inside, who then turn on lights and expose themselves to more light.”

“The public needs to know about the factors causing [light pollution], but research is not going at the pace it should,” Blask says. Susan Golden, distinguished professor at the Center for Research on Biological Clocks of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, agrees. She says, “Light pollution is still way down the list of important environmental issues needing study. That’s why it’s so hard to get funds to research the issue.”

“The policy implications of unnecessary light at night are enormous,” says Stevens in reference to the health and energy ramifications [for more on the energy impact of light pollution, see “Switch On the Night: Policies for Smarter Lighting,” p. A28 this issue]. “It is fully as important an issue as global warming.” Moreover, he says, artificial light is a ubiquitous environmental agent. “Almost everyone in modern society uses electric light to reduce the natural daily dark period by extending light into the evening or before sunrise in the morning,” he says. “On that basis, we are all exposed to electric light at night, whereas before electricity, and still in much of the developing world, people get twelve hours of dark whether they are asleep or not.”

Sources believe that the meeting at the NIEHS in September 2006 was a promising beginning for moving forward on the light pollution issue. “Ten years ago, scientists thought something was there, but couldn’t put a finger on it,” says Leslie Reinlib, a program director at the NIEHS who helped organize the meeting. “Now we are really just at the tip of the iceberg, but we do have something that’s scientific and can be measured.”

The 23 participants at the NIEHS-sponsored meeting identified a research agenda for further study that included the functioning of the circadian clock, epidemiologic studies to define the artificial light exposure/disease relationship, the role of melatonin in artificial light–induced disease, and development of interventions and treatments to reduce the impact of light pollution on disease. “It was a very significant meeting,” Brainard says. “It’s the first time the National Institutes of Health sponsored a broad multidisciplinary look at the light-environmental question with the intent of moving to the next step.”

Glare, overillumination, and sky glow (which makes the sky over a city look orange, yellow, or pink) are all forms of light pollution. These photos were taken in Goodwood, Ontario, a small town about 45 minutes northeast of Toronto during and the night after the regionwide 14 August 2003 blackout. The lights inside the house in the blackout picture were created by candles and flashlights.

How Outdoor Lighting Translates into Light Pollution

Turtle hatchlings instinctively orient away from the dark silhouette of the nighttime shore. Here hatchlings have been temporarily distracted by a bright lamp. Hatchlings and mother turtles distracted by shorefront lights can wander onto nearby roadways.

Increase in Artificial Night Sky Brightness in North America

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified shift work as a probable human carcinogen. A study in the December 2008 issue of Sleep found that use of light exposure therapy, sunglasses, and a strict sleep schedule may help night-shift workers achieve a better-balanced circadian rhythm.

• Systematic Map Protocol
• Open access
• Published: 12 February 2019

Evidence of the environmental impact of noise pollution on biodiversity: a systematic map protocol

• Romain Sordello 1 ,
• Frédérique Flamerie De Lachapelle 2 ,
• Barbara Livoreil 3 &
• Sylvie Vanpeene 4  

Environmental Evidence volume  8 , Article number:  8 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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A Systematic Map to this article was published on 11 September 2020

For decades, biodiversity has suffered massive losses worldwide. Urbanization is one of the major drivers of extinction because it leads to the physical fragmentation and loss of natural habitats and it is associated with related effects, e.g. pollution and in particular noise pollution given that many man-made sounds are generated in cities (e.g. industrial and traffic noise, etc.). However, all human activities generate sounds, even far from any human habitation (e.g. motor boats on lakes, aircraft in the air, etc.). Ecological research now deals increasingly with the effects of noise pollution on biodiversity. Many studies have shown the impacts of anthropogenic noise and concluded that it is potentially a threat to life on Earth. The present work describes a protocol to systematically map evidence of the environmental impact of noise pollution on biodiversity. The resulting map will inform on the species most studied and on the demonstrated impacts. This will be useful for further primary research by identifying knowledge gaps and in view of further analysis, such as systematic reviews.

Searches will include peer-reviewed and grey literature published in English and French. Two online databases will be searched using English terms and search consistency will be assessed with a test list. No geographical restrictions will be applied. The subject population will include all species. Exposures will include all types of man-made sounds (industrial, traffic, etc.) in all types of environments (or media) (terrestrial, aerial, aquatic), including all contexts and sound origins (spontaneous or recorded sounds, in situ or laboratory studies, etc.). All relevant outcomes will be considered (space use, reproduction, communication, abundance, etc.). An open-access database will be produced with all relevant studies selected during the three screening stages. For each study, the database will contain metadata on key variables of interest (species, types of sound, outcomes, etc.). This database will be available in conjunction with a map report describing the mapping process and the evidence base with summary figures and tables of the study characteristics.

For decades, biodiversity has suffered massive losses worldwide. Species are disappearing (e.g. [ 36 ]), populations are collapsing (e.g. [ 15 ]), species’ ranges are changing (both shrinking and expanding) at unprecedented rates (e.g. [ 7 ]) and communities are being displaced by invasive alien species (e.g. [ 24 ]). All the above are caused by human activities and scientists regularly alert the international community concerning our responsibility [ 30 ]. In particular, urban growth is one of the major reasons for biodiversity loss [ 21 , 29 ] in that it destroys natural habitats, fragments the remaining ecosystems (e.g. [ 40 ]) and also has other impacts, such as pollution. For example, cities produce artificial light at night that disturbs circadian rhythms, impacting plants and animals [ 2 , 13 ]. Similarly, many man-made sounds are generated in cities, by traffic and numerous human activities (industrial, commercial, etc.) [ 39 ]. In fact, anthropogenic noise is omnipresent and ranges beyond cities. All human activities generate noise, even far from cities (e.g. motor boats on lakes, aircraft in the sky, etc.) and those sounds can reach wild, uninhabited places [ 16 ].

Many studies have shown that such sounds may have considerable impact on animals. However, sound is not a problem in itself. A majority of species use, hear and emit sounds (e.g. Romer and Bailey 1990 [ 32 ]). Sounds are often used to communicate between partners or conspecifics, or to detect prey or predators. The problem arises when sounds turn into “noise”, i.e. a disturbance or even a form of pollution. In this case, man-made sounds can mask and inhibit animal sounds and/or animal audition and it has been shown to affect communication [ 37 ], use of space [ 10 ] or reproduction [ 3 ]. This problem affects many biological groups such as birds [ 19 ], amphibians [ 9 ], reptiles [ 22 ], fish [ 1 ], mammals [ 34 , 35 ] and invertebrates [ 6 ]. It spans several types of ecosystems including terrestrial [ 18 ], aquatic [ 17 ] and coastal ecosystems [ 33 ]. Many types of sounds produced by human activities would seem to be a form of noise pollution affecting biodiversity, including traffic [ 20 ], ships [ 38 ], aircraft [ 4 ] and industrial activities [ 23 ]. Noise pollution can also act in synergy with other disturbances, for example light pollution [ 26 ].

For decades, noise regulations have focused on human disorders but recently, public policies in biodiversity conservation have started to pay more attention to noise pollution. In 1996, for the first time, the European Commission’s Green Paper on Future Noise Control Policy dealt with noise pollution from the point of view of environmental protection. Today in Europe, quiet areas are recommended to guarantee the tranquility of fauna [ 12 ]. Since 2000 in France, an article in “Code de l’environnement” (art. L571-1) has contained the terms “harms the environment” with respect to disturbances due to noise. To further mitigate the effects of noise pollution on biodiversity, the French Ecology Ministry wants to obtain more information on the impacts of noise on biodiversity in order to initiate policies focused on species which are known to be highly exposed. The Ministry is also interested in the types of impacts that have been effectively demonstrated and in the types of noise that have been proven to affect wildlife. We proposed to produce a systematic map of the literature dealing with this issue to provide the Ministry with a report on current knowledge and to identify sectors (sources, types of impact, etc.) where research is needed to fill in knowledge gaps.

A preliminary search did not identify any existing systematic maps or reviews, however a few reviews of the literature have been published. Most of them concern only one biological group, such as Morley et al. [ 25 ] on invertebrates, Patricelli and Blickley [ 27 ] on birds and Popper and Hastings [ 28 ] on fish. A synthesis published by Shannon et al. in 2016 [ 34 ] is more general and comes closer to a systematic map, but the search strategy would seem to be incomplete. The literature search was performed on only one database (ISI Web of Science within selected subject areas) and the review did not include grey literature. Finally, a meta-analysis was performed by Roca et al. [ 31 ], but it dealt exclusively with birds and amphibians and the authors were interested in only one effect (vocalization adjustment).

This report describes the protocol used to develop a systematic map of noise pollution and biodiversity. The systematic map will provide further information on the knowledge currently available on this issue. It will include all the relevant studies (with grey literature) collected after three screening stages. An open-access database will be produced, containing metadata for each study on key variables of interest (species, types of sound, effects, etc.). This database will be available in conjunction with a map report describing the mapping process and the evidence base. It will include aggregate data and tables of the study characteristics to highlight any gaps in the research evidence concerning the issue.

Objective of the map

The objective of the systematic map is to assess the biological and ecological impacts of noise pollution. Noise pollution is considered here as anthropogenic noise. It does not include noise made by other animals (e.g. chorus frogs) or natural events (e.g. thunder, waterfalls). The systematic map will address all man-made noise whatever its origin (road traffic, industrial machines, boats, planes, etc.), its environment or media (terrestrial, aquatic, aerial) or its type (infrasound, ultrasound, white noise, etc.). The goal is to provide a comprehensive image of the available knowledge on this topic and to quantify the literature by taxonomic groups, types of impacts and even types of studies. For this reason, the systematic map will cover all species. It will deal with all kinds of impacts, from biological to ecological (use of space, reproduction, communication, abundance, etc.). It will encompass in situ studies as well as ex situ studies (aquariums, laboratories, cages, etc.).

The primary question is: what is the evidence that man-made noise impacts biodiversity?

The secondary question is: which species, kinds of impacts and types of noise are most studied?

The components of the systematic map are detailed in Table  1 .

Searching for articles

Searches will be performed using exclusively English search terms.

Only studies published in English and in French will be included in this systematic map, due to limited resources and the languages understood by the map team. The list of search terms is presented below (see “ Search string ” section).

Search string

A scoping exercise was conducted on the “Web of Science Core Collection” database to build-up the search strings. Terms describing the exposure (noise pollution) and the population (biodiversity) were combined in an iterative manner until best performance was obtained. Terms describing effects (outcomes) were not included because the aim of the map is to document the available literature without any a priori restrictions on the types of effects measured in the articles.

The search string that produced the highest efficiency (number of hits compared to the test list) is presented below (see Additional file 1 for more details on the process to build the search string).

((TI = (noise OR sound$) OR TS = (“masking auditory” OR “man-made noise” OR “anthropogenic noise” OR “man-made sound$” OR “music festival$” OR ((pollution OR transportation OR road$ OR highway$ OR motorway$ OR railway$ OR traffic OR urban OR city OR cities OR construction OR ship$ OR boat$ OR port$ OR aircraft$ OR airplane$ OR airport$ OR industr* OR machinery OR “gas extraction” OR mining OR drilling OR pile-driving OR “communication network$” OR “wind farm$” OR agric* OR farming OR military OR gun$ OR visitor$) AND noise))) AND TS = (ecolog* OR biodiversity OR ecosystem$ OR “natural habitat$” OR species OR vertebrate$ OR mammal$ OR reptile$ OR amphibian$ OR bird$ OR fish* OR invertebrate$ OR arthropod$ OR insect$ OR arachnid$ OR crustacean$ OR centipede$)).

Comprehensiveness of the search

A test list of 65 scientific articles was established (see Additional file 2 ) and used to assess the comprehensiveness of the search string. The test list was composed of the three groups listed below.

Forty relevant scientific articles identified by the review team prior to the review.

Eight key articles identified using three relevant reviews:

Brumm [ 5 ] (two articles);

Cerema [ 8 ] (three articles);

Dutilleux and Fontaine [ 11 ] (three articles).

Seventeen studies not readily accessible or indexed by the most common academic databases, submitted by subject experts contacted prior to the review (29 subject experts were contacted, 7 responded).

Online publication databases

We first listed the databases to which the members of our review team had access, databases that covered ecology and that guaranteed reproducibility (accessibility by researchers from all over the world, advanced search functions, etc.). The resource limitations weighing on the project did not allow us to cover more than two databases given the number of articles obtained during the scoping exercise.

On the basis of the criteria listed above, the two databases below were selected:

“Web of Science Core Collection” on the Web of Science platform (Clarivate). See Additional file 3 for citation indexes included in the “Web of Science Core Collection” to which the review team had access via the team members’ institutions. As explained above, the scoping exercise was conducted using this database. It returned 7859 articles (the search was run on the 14 December 2018 and covered SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI and CCR-EXPANDED, without any timespan restrictions). The search comprehensiveness value was 92% (60 articles in the test list were referenced in the WOS CC and 55 were retrieved by the string).

Scopus (Elsevier). The search string described above was adapted to take into account differences in search syntax. It returned 11,186 articles (a preliminary search was run on 14 December 2018, without any timespan restrictions). The comprehensiveness value was 92% (61 articles in the test list were indexed in Scopus and 56 were retrieved by the string).

Approximately 6000 articles were listed in both databases. One of the articles not indexed in the WOS CC was indexed in Scopus and was retrieved by the search string. Consequently, combining the two databases, the global comprehensiveness value was 93% (61 articles indexed and 57 articles retrieved by the search string). See Additional file 4 for more details on the comprehensiveness values.

Internet searches

Searches will be performed using the search engines:

Google Scholar ( https://scholar.google.com/ );

BASE ( https://www.base-search.net ) and/or CORE ( https://core.ac.uk/ ).

The English search string detailed above will be used. If necessary, the search string will be modified as per the search-engine help files (when provided). To minimize bias in favor of published literature in search results provided by Google Scholar [ 14 ], searches will be performed on titles only and the first 300 hits will be screened (based on sorting by relevance of results if possible).

Specialist sources

The following French specialist organizations will be searched for relevant publications, including grey literature, using manual searches of their websites and automatic search facilities using French keywords if possible:

Information and Documentation Center on Noise ( http://www.bruit.fr );

Document portal of the French Ecology Ministry ( http://www.portail.documentation.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/ );

Document database of the General commission for sustainable development ( http://temis.documentation.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/ ).

Supplementary searches

A call for literature will be conducted through a professional network to find non peer-reviewed literature, including reports published in French or in English. Specialized organizations will also be requested to amplify the call for literature using their network, their web forum or their mailing list. Social media ( http://www.academia.edu , http://www.researchgate.net and http://www.linkedin.com ) will be used to alert the research community concerning the systematic map and to request that subject experts submit non peer-reviewed publications.

Article screening and study eligibility criteria

Screening process.

Using the predefined inclusion/exclusion criteria detailed below, article selection will proceed according to a three-stage hierarchical process, i.e. first title, then abstract and finally the full text.

If there is any doubt regarding the presence of a relevant inclusion criterion or if there is insufficient information to make an informed decision, articles will be retained for assessment at a later stage. In particular, articles retained after title screening but that do not have an abstract will be immediately transferred to full-text screening. Given that titles and abstracts in grey literature do not conform to scientific standards, assessments of grey literature will proceed immediately to the full-text screening phase. Care will be taken to ensure that reviewers never screen their own articles.

The three screening stages will be conducted by two or more reviewers. To assess the consistency of the inclusion/exclusion decisions, a Kappa test will be performed. To that end, before the actual screening process, a set of articles will be randomly selected and screened by each of the reviewers independently. The operation will be repeated until reaching a Kappa value higher than 0.6. Whatever the Kappa value, disagreements will be discussed and resolved between the reviewers before beginning the screening process.

During the scoping stage conducted in the “Web of Science Core Collection”, the three stages of the screening process were tested by one reviewer in order to refine the eligibility criteria. For the articles screened during the scoping stage, a second reviewer will examine the rejected articles to assess the consistency of the inclusion/exclusion decision.

Eligibility criteria

Article eligibility will be based on the list of criteria detailed in Table  2 . The list of all articles will be provided, informing the inclusion/exclusion decisions at the three screening stages and, in case, reasons for the exclusion (see the code book in Additional file 5 ).

Data coding strategy

All the studies passing the three screening stages will be included in the mapping database.

Coding strategy

Each article will be coded based on the full text using keywords and expanded comments fields describing various aspects of study (see the code book in Additional file 6 ).

The key variables will include:

Study description:

Publication source (WOS research, Scopus research, Google Scholar research, etc.);

Basic bibliographic information (authors, title, publication date, journal, DOI, etc.);

Language (English/French);

Publication type (journal article, book, thesis…);

Study content (study, review, meta-analysis, other, etc.);

Study characteristics:

Country where the study was conducted;

Type of population studied (species or species groups);

Type of exposition, source of noise (e.g. urban, transportation, industrial activity, recreation, other), type of environment or media (terrestrial, aerial, aquatic), type of noise (artificial, real, recorded);

Type of impacts, used to describe subtopics of noise pollution (e.g. space use, reproduction, communication, abundance, etc.) in relation to the outcomes;

Information on study quality:

Study context: in situ (field)/ex situ (laboratory, aquariums, etc.);

Experimental (causal)/Observational (correlative) study;

For experimental studies, the type of comparator (spatial/temporal).

As far as possible, controlled vocabulary will be employed to code the variables (e.g. publication type, dates, country, etc.), using thesaurus or ISO standards (e.g. ISO 639-1 for the language publication variable). To categorize the sources of noise and the outcomes (effects), we will use the review Shannon et al. [ 34 ] that give an example of categorization (see in this publication Table 2, page 988 about the sources of noise and Table 3, page 889 about the impacts of noise).

Each selected article will be double coded by two reviewers. If, due to resource limitations, true double coding is not possible, an a posteriori check will be carried out by a second reviewer and potential disagreements will be discussed until a consensus is reached.

Study map and presentation

Where there is more than one study found in an article, each study will be recorded as a specific entry in the database.

The database will be open access and included as an appendix to the systematic map publication. To ensure reusability and long-term preservation, the database will, if possible, be deposited as a.csv file in a data repository such as Zenodo.

The final systematic map will include summary figures and tables of the study characteristics. Possible knowledge gaps (un- or under-represented subtopics that warrant further primary research) and knowledge clusters (well-represented subtopics that are amenable to full synthesis by a systematic review) will be identified e.g. by cross-tabulating key meta-data variables in heat maps (e.g. biological groups and outcomes). Based on these results, recommendations will be made on priorities for future research and mitigation of noise pollution.

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Authors’ contributions

RS is the project scientific coordinator of the map. RS originated the idea of the systematic map, conducted the scoping stage and wrote the draft manuscript. BL assisted the team concerning methods and CEE guidelines. FF helped with the search strategy. SV brought her expertise about noise pollution public policies. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Authors’ information

RS, BL and SV are scientists. FF is an academic librarian. BL works at the French Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Center, hosted at FRB (Paris).

Acknowledgements

RS thanks Nicola Randall for advice.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to the systematic map protocol in that no datasets were generated for this article. Datasets produced by the systematic map will be shared publicly.

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This research is undertaken as current work of UMS Patrimoine naturel, a joint research unit funded by AFB French Biodiversity Agency, CNRS National Scientific Research Center and MNHN National Museum of Natural History, on behalf of the French Ecology Ministry.

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Romain Sordello

Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité (FRB), 75005, Paris, France

Frédérique Flamerie De Lachapelle

Université de Bordeaux, 33400, Talence, France

Barbara Livoreil

Institut de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l’environnement et l’agriculture (Irstea), 13182, Aix-en-Provence, France

Sylvie Vanpeene

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Additional files

Additional file 1..

Search string building process.

Additional file 2.

List of eligible studies identified by subject experts.

Additional file 3.

Web of Science Core Collection database subscription details.

Additional file 4.

Details on database indexation of the articles in the test list for the comprehensiveness calculation.

Additional file 5.

Codebook of the inclusion/exclusion decisions at the three screening stages.

Additional file 6.

Codebook of the systematic map database.

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Sordello, R., Flamerie De Lachapelle, F., Livoreil, B. et al. Evidence of the environmental impact of noise pollution on biodiversity: a systematic map protocol. Environ Evid 8 , 8 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-019-0146-6

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Received : 20 June 2018

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-019-0146-6

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Noise pollution assessment and management in rare earth mining areas: a case study of Kollam, Kerala, India

• Published: 05 August 2024
• Volume 196 , article number  787 , ( 2024 )

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• Sravanth Tangellamudi 1 ,
• Akhil Vikraman 1 &
• Saurabh Sakhre 1  

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Noise pollution is an unintentional consequence of mining activities, needing rigorous assessment, monitoring, and mitigation techniques to reduce its impact on local residents and ecosystems. The study specifically examines the noise pollution from rare earth mining activities in the Neendakara-Kayamkulam (NK) coastal belt, Kollam, Kerala, India, a region rich in ilmenite, rutile, sillimanite, zircon, and monazite. Despite the known environmental and health impacts of noise pollution, there is limited specific data on its magnitude and sources in this region, as well as a lack of effective mitigation strategies tailored to rare earth mining operations. Studies have indicated that mining operations, such as the movement of heavy mineral sands, considerably elevate noise levels, which have an effect on the environment’s quality and public health. This study seeks to fill the gap by geospatial mapping and assessing the noise levels and recommend measures to effectively mitigate noise pollution. Systematic noise measurements were conducted at 48 suitable locations within the NK coastal belt, including residential, commercial, industrial, coastal, and silence zones. The noise levels vary from 49.1 dB(A) near a religious place to 82.4 dB(A) near the local industry. The study employs geospatial noise mapping and land cover superimposition to implement class-specific mitigation measures for noise pollution in a coastal vicinity mixed land use area, including natural and vegetative barriers, operational scheduling, zoning, and land use planning.

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The data and materials used in this study are not publicly available due to privacy concerns. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, and they are thus not included in the supplementary information. However, reasonable requests for collaboration or clarification can be directed to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Director, CSIR-NIIST Thiruvananthapuram, for providing infrastructural support.

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Sravanth Tangellamudi, Akhil Vikraman & Saurabh Sakhre

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All authors contributed to this paper in various capacities. Sravanth Tangellamudi played a key role in conceptualizing and designing the study, including draft preparation as well as analyzing the data collected. Akhil Vikraman has been involved in conducting fieldwork, including noise level measurements at different locations within the Neendakara-Kayamkulam coastal belt and interpolation part for noise mapping and analysis. Saurabh Sakhre contributed expertise in environmental impact assessment and mitigation strategies, aiding in the interpretation of results and proposing measures to reduce noise pollution in the mining region.

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Tangellamudi, S., Vikraman, A. & Sakhre, S. Noise pollution assessment and management in rare earth mining areas: a case study of Kollam, Kerala, India. Environ Monit Assess 196 , 787 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-12931-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-12931-5

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Light Pollution

People all over the world are living under the nighttime glow of artificial light, and it is causing big problems for humans, wildlife, and the environment. There is a global movement to reduce light pollution, and everyone can help.

Conservation, Earth Science, Astronomy

Hong Kong Light Pollution

Boats, buildings, street lights, and even fireworks contribute to the light pollution in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong. Light pollution can be detrimental to the health of people and animals in the area.

Photograph by Jodi Cobb

Most environmental pollution on Earth comes from humans and their inventions. Take, for example, the automobile or that miraculous human-made material, plastic . Today, automobile emissions are a major source of air pollution contributing to climate change, and plastics fill our ocean, creating a significant health hazard to marine animals.

And what about the electric lightbulb, thought to be one of the greatest human inventions of all time? Electric light can be a beautiful thing, guiding us home when the sun goes down, keeping us safe and making our homes cozy and bright. However, like carbon dioxide emissions and plastic , too much of a good thing has started to negatively impact the environment. Light pollution , the excessive or inappropriate use of outdoor artificial light, is affecting human health, wildlife behavior, and our ability to observe stars and other celestial objects.

That Earthly Sky Glow

Light pollution is a global issue. This became glaringly obvious when the World Atlas of Night Sky Brightness , a computer-generated map based on thousands of satellite photos, was published in 2016. Available online for viewing, the atlas shows how and where our globe is lit up at night. Vast areas of North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia are glowing with light, while only the most remote regions on Earth (Siberia, the Sahara, and the Amazon) are in total darkness. Some of the most light-polluted countries in the world are Singapore, Qatar, and Kuwait.

Sky glow is the brightening of the night sky, mostly over urban areas, due to the electric lights of cars, streetlamps, offices, factories, outdoor advertising, and buildings, turning night into day for people who work and play long after sunset.

People living in cities with high levels of sky glow have a hard time seeing more than a handful of stars at night. Astronomers are particularly concerned with sky glow pollution as it reduces their ability to view celestial objects.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population, and 99 percent of Americans and Europeans, live under sky glow. It sounds pretty, but sky glow caused by anthropogenic activities is one of the most pervasive forms of light pollution .

Is it Time to Get Up?

Artificial light can wreak havoc on natural body rhythms in both humans and animals. Nocturnal light interrupts sleep and confuses the circadian rhythm—the internal, twenty-four-hour clock that guides day and night activities and affects physiological processes in nearly all living organisms. One of these processes is the production of the hormone melatonin , which is released when it is dark and is inhibited when there is light present. An increased amount of light at night lowers melatonin production, which results in sleep deprivation, fatigue, headaches, stress, anxiety, and other health problems. Recent studies also show a connection between reduced melatonin levels and cancer. In fact, new scientific discoveries about the health effects of artificial light have convinced the American Medical Association (AMA) to support efforts to control light pollution and conduct research on the potential risks of exposure to light at night. Blue light, in particular, has been shown to reduce levels of melatonin in humans. Blue light is found in cell phones and other computer devices, as well as in light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the kinds of bulbs that have become popular at home and in industrial and city lighting due to their low cost and energy efficiency.

Animals are Lost and Confused, Too

Studies show that light pollution is also impacting animal behaviors, such as migration patterns , wake-sleep habits, and habitat formation. Because of light pollution , sea turtles and birds guided by moonlight during migration get confused, lose their way, and often die. Large numbers of insects, a primary food source for birds and other animals, are drawn to artificial lights and are instantly killed upon contact with light sources. Birds are also affected by this, and many cities have adopted a “Lights Out” program to turn off building lights during bird migration.

A study of blackbirds ( Turdus merula)  in Germany found that traffic noise and artificial night lighting causes birds in the city to become active earlier than birds in natural areas—waking and singing as much as five hours sooner than their country cousins. Even animals living under the sea may be affected by underwater artificial lighting. One study looked at how marine animals responded to brightly lit panels submerged under water off the coast of Wales. Fewer filter feeding animals, such as the sea squirt and sea bristle, made their homes near the lighted panels. This could mean that the light from oil rigs, passing ships, and harbors is altering marine ecosystems .

Even in places meant to provide protected natural habitats for wildlife, light pollution is making an impact. The National Park Service (NPS) has made maintaining a dark night sky a priority. The NPS Night Skies Team has been monitoring night sky brightness in some one hundred parks, and nearly every park showed at least some light pollution.

You Shouldn’t Need Sunglasses at Night

There are three other kinds of light pollution: glare, clutter, and light trespass. Glare is excessive brightness that can cause visual discomfort (for example, when driving). Clutter is bright, confusing, and excessive groupings of light sources (for example, Times Square in New York City, New York). Light trespass is when light extends into an area where it is not wanted or needed (like a streetlight illuminating a nearby bedroom window). Most outdoor lighting is poorly positioned, sending wasted electricity up into the sky.

Bring Back the Dark Sky

There are several organizations working to reduce light pollution. One of these is the U.S.-based International Dark Sky Association (IDA), formed in 1988 to preserve the natural night sky. IDA educates the public and certifies parks and other places that have worked to reduce their light emissions. In 2017, the IDA approved the first U.S. dark sky reserve. The massive Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, which clocks in at 3,667 square kilometers (1,416 square miles), joined eleven other dark sky reserves established around the world. As of December of 2018, IDA lists thirteen dark sky reserves on their site.

Stop Wasting Energy: Things We Can All Do

More people are taking action to reduce light pollution and bring back the natural night sky. Many states have adopted legislation to control outdoor lighting, and manufacturers have designed and produced high-efficiency light sources that save energy and reduce light pollution.

Individuals are urged to use outdoor lighting only when and where it is needed, to make sure outdoor lights are properly shielded and directing light down instead of up into the sky, and to close window blinds, shades, and curtains at night to keep light inside.

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