Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland.
Faculty of Science, University of Basel, CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Apr 26;17(9):3011. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17093011.
Accurate exposure assessment is essential in environmental epidemiological studies. This is especially true for aircraft noise, which is characterized by a high spatial and temporal variation. We propose a method to assess individual aircraft noise exposure for a case-crossover study investigating the acute effects of aircraft noise on cardiovascular deaths. We identified all cases of cardiovascular death (24,886) occurring near Zürich airport, Switzerland, over fifteen years from the Swiss National Cohort. Outdoor noise exposure at the home address was calculated for the night preceding death and control nights using flight operations information from Zürich airport and noise footprints calculated for major aircraft types and air routes. We estimated three different noise metrics: mean sound pressure level (L), maximum sound pressure level (L), and number above threshold 55 dB (NAT) for different nighttime windows. Average nighttime aircraft noise levels were 45.2 dB, 64.6 dB, and 18.5 for L, L, and NAT respectively. In this paper, we present a method to estimate individual aircraft noise exposure with high spatio-temporal resolution and a flexible choice of exposure events and metrics. This exposure assessment will be used in a case-crossover study investigating the acute effects of noise on health.
准确的暴露评估在环境流行病学研究中至关重要。这对于飞机噪声尤其如此，因为飞机噪声具有高度的时空变化。我们提出了一种方法，用于评估病例交叉研究中个体飞机噪声暴露情况，该研究调查了飞机噪声对心血管死亡的急性影响。我们确定了瑞士苏黎世机场附近发生的所有心血管死亡病例（24886 例），这些病例发生在瑞士国家队列研究的十五年期间。使用苏黎世机场的飞行操作信息和主要飞机类型和航线计算的噪声足迹，计算了死亡前一晚和对照夜晚的家庭住址的户外噪声暴露。我们估计了三种不同的噪声指标：夜间不同窗口的平均声压级（L）、最大声压级（L）和超过 55dB 的次数（NAT）。L、L 和 NAT 的平均夜间飞机噪声水平分别为 45.2dB、64.6dB 和 18.5dB。在本文中，我们提出了一种方法，用于以高时空分辨率估计个体飞机噪声暴露，并灵活选择暴露事件和指标。这种暴露评估将用于病例交叉研究，以调查噪声对健康的急性影响。
