Jacuzzi Giordano, Kuehne Lauren M, Harvey Anne, Hurley Christine, Wilbur Robert, Seto Edmund, Olden Julian D
School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, College of the Environment, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
Omfishient Consulting, Bremerton, WA, 98310, USA.
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2025 Jan;35(1):91-103. doi: 10.1038/s41370-024-00670-1. Epub 2024 May 9.
While the adverse health effects of civil aircraft noise are relatively well studied, impacts associated with more intense and intermittent noise from military aviation have been rarely assessed. In recent years, increased training at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, USA has raised concerns regarding the public health and well-being implications of noise from military aviation.
This study assessed the public health risks of military aircraft noise by developing a systematic workflow that uses acoustic and aircraft operations data to map noise exposure and predict health outcomes at the population scale.
Acoustic data encompassing seven years of monitoring efforts were integrated with flight operations data for 2020-2021 and a Department of Defense noise simulation model to characterize the noise regime. The model produced contours for day-night, nighttime, and 24-h average levels, which were validated by field monitoring and mapped to yield the estimated noise burden. Established thresholds and exposure-response relationships were used to predict the population subject to potential noise-related health effects, including annoyance, sleep disturbance, hearing impairment, and delays in childhood learning.
Over 74,000 people within the area of aircraft noise exposure were at risk of adverse health effects. Of those exposed, substantial numbers were estimated to be highly annoyed and highly sleep disturbed, and several schools were exposed to levels that place them at risk of delay in childhood learning. Noise in some areas exceeded thresholds established by federal regulations for public health, residential land use and noise mitigation action, as well as the ranges of established exposure-response relationships.
This study quantified the extensive spatial scale and population health burden of noise from military aviation. We employed a novel GIS-based workflow for relating mapped distributions of aircraft noise exposure to a suite of public health outcomes by integrating acoustic monitoring and simulation data with a dasymetric population density map. This approach enables the evaluation of population health impacts due to past, current, and future proposed military operations. Moreover, it can be modified for application to other environmental noise sources and offers an improved open-source tool to assess the population health implications of environmental noise exposure, inform at-risk communities, and guide efforts in noise mitigation and policy governing noise legislation, urban planning, and land use.
虽然民用飞机噪声对健康的不利影响已得到较为充分的研究，但与军事航空更强烈、更间歇性噪声相关的影响却很少被评估。近年来，美国惠德比岛海军航空站训练活动增加，引发了人们对军事航空噪声对公众健康和福祉影响的担忧。
本研究通过开发一种系统的工作流程来评估军事飞机噪声对公众健康的风险，该流程利用声学和飞机运行数据来绘制噪声暴露情况，并在人群层面预测健康结果。
将涵盖七年监测工作的声学数据与2020 - 2021年的飞行运行数据以及国防部噪声模拟模型相结合，以描述噪声状况。该模型生成了昼夜、夜间和24小时平均水平的等高线，通过现场监测进行验证，并进行映射以得出估计的噪声负担。利用既定的阈值和暴露 - 反应关系来预测可能受到噪声相关健康影响的人群，包括烦恼、睡眠干扰、听力损伤以及儿童学习延迟。
在飞机噪声暴露区域内，超过74000人面临健康不良影响的风险。在这些受暴露者中，估计有相当数量的人高度烦恼且睡眠受到严重干扰，几所学校所受噪声水平使其面临儿童学习延迟的风险。一些地区的噪声超过了联邦法规为公众健康、住宅用地使用和噪声缓解行动所设定的阈值，以及既定暴露 - 反应关系的范围。
本研究量化了军事航空噪声在广泛空间尺度上的范围以及对人群健康的负担。我们采用了一种基于地理信息系统（GIS）的新颖工作流程，通过将声学监测和模拟数据与非均匀人口密度地图相结合，将绘制的飞机噪声暴露分布与一系列公众健康结果联系起来。这种方法能够评估过去、当前和未来拟议军事行动对人群健康的影响。此外，它可以进行修改以应用于其他环境噪声源，并提供了一个改进的开源工具，用于评估环境噪声暴露对人群健康的影响，为受影响社区提供信息，并指导噪声缓解工作以及噪声立法、城市规划和土地使用方面的政策制定。
