Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, U.S. Department of Transportation, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2022 Feb;130(2):27009. doi: 10.1289/EHP9307. Epub 2022 Feb 15.
Communities with lower socioeconomic status and higher prevalence of racial/ethnic minority populations are often more exposed to environmental pollutants. Although studies have shown associations between aircraft noise and property values and various health outcomes, little is known about how aircraft noise exposures are sociodemographically patterned.
Our aim was to describe characteristics of populations exposed to aviation noise by race/ethnicity, education, and income in the United States.
Aircraft noise contours characterized as day-night average sound level (DNL) were developed for 90 U.S. airports in 2010 for DNL in 1-dB(A) increments. We compared characteristics of exposed U.S. Census block groups at three thresholds (, , and ), assigned on the basis of the block group land area being within the threshold, vs. unexposed block groups near study airports. Comparisons were made across block group race/ethnicity, education, and income categories within the study areas (). We performed both multinomial and other various multivariable regression approaches, including models controlling for airport and models with random intercepts specifying within-airport effects and adjusting for airport-level means.
Aggregated across multiple airports, block groups with a higher Hispanic population had higher odds of being exposed to aircraft noise. For example, the multinomial analysis showed that a 10-percentage point increase in a block group's Hispanic population was associated with an increased odds ratio of 39% (95% CI: 25%, 54%) of being exposed to compared with block groups exposed to . Block groups with higher proportions of residents with only a high school education had higher odds of being exposed to aircraft noise. Results were robust across multiple regression approaches; however, there was substantial heterogeneity across airports.
These results suggest that across U.S. airports, there is indication of sociodemographic disparities in noise exposures. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP9307.
社会经济地位较低且少数族裔人口比例较高的社区通常更容易受到环境污染物的影响。尽管研究表明飞机噪声与财产价值和各种健康结果之间存在关联，但对于飞机噪声暴露如何在社会人口统计学上存在差异知之甚少。
我们的目的是描述美国受飞机噪声暴露影响的人群按种族/族裔、教育程度和收入的特征。
在 2010 年，针对美国 90 个机场的飞机噪声轮廓进行了描述，以 1-dB(A)的增量表示昼夜平均声级（DNL）。我们比较了三个阈值（、和）下暴露的美国人口普查块组的特征（根据块组土地面积在阈值内的程度进行分配，与研究机场附近的未暴露块组进行比较）。在研究区域内（），按块组的种族/族裔、教育程度和收入类别进行比较。我们进行了多项和其他各种多变量回归方法，包括控制机场的模型和具有随机截距的模型，这些模型指定了机场内的效应，并调整了机场级别的平均值。
在多个机场的综合结果中，西班牙裔人口比例较高的块组有更高的飞机噪声暴露几率。例如，多项分析表明，块组西班牙裔人口增加 10 个百分点与暴露于飞机噪声的几率增加 39%（95%CI：25%，54%）相关，而与暴露于的块组相比。具有更高比例仅受过高中教育的居民的块组有更高的飞机噪声暴露几率。结果在多种回归方法中都是稳健的；然而，各个机场之间存在很大的异质性。
这些结果表明，在美国的各个机场，噪声暴露存在社会人口统计学差异的迹象。
