The impact of combined environmental noise on sleep quality and annoyance: a scoping review

Kurzfassung

Environmental noise is pervasive and poses significant challenges for public health, particularly regarding annoyance and undisturbed sleep. In Germany, about 60 million people find themselves under constant exposure to two or more noise sources, with a comprehensive overall noise assessment to evaluate potential harm to the population still missing. This scoping review examines how combined environmental noise is assessed in the literature, focusing on its impact on sleep disturbance and perceived annoyance. Eight prominent annoyance models (three perceptual and five psychophysical) used to predict noise annoyance are considered, while also including a non-exhaustive list of additional models. Findings indicate that perceptual models generally outperform psychophysical models, which tend to oversimplify interactions by relying solely on energy-based metrics. The vector summation model emerged as the most effective perceptual model, with the perceptual mixed model serving as a reliable alternative. Among psychophysical models, the independent effects model and the energy difference model produce the best predictions, albeit consistently underperforming relative to perceptual approaches. The review further identifies aircraft noise as the most disturbing source during nighttime and as the primary contributor to total noise annoyance. However, through the research it emerged that the ranking of noise sources can fluctuate based on sound level and context, with railway and road traffic noise exhibiting variable impacts under different conditions. The complex interplay of partial masking, synergistic effects, and cultural variability underscores the challenges in assessing combined noise annoyance. Future research should focus on addressing these methodological limitations and revising perceptual models – specifically to develop concepts to predict combined noise annoyance reliably.