Quantifying the spatial burden of disease from noise pollution in England
Noise pollution from transportation is one of the leading contributors to the environmental disease burden in Europe, though spatial assessments of the burden of disease at regional and local levels are scarce. This study, led by the UK Health Security Agency and the University of Leicester (some members of the team have since moved to City St. George’s, University of London), provided a novel assessment of the spatial variations of these associated health burdens nationally, regionally, and for each local authority in England based on a toolkit developed for Public Health England (now the UKHSA). The study estimated the burden of annoyance (highly annoyed), sleep disturbance (highly sleep disturbed), ischemic heart disease (IHD), stroke, and diabetes attributable to long-term transportation noise exposures in England for the adult population in 2018. To derive estimates, the authors combined literature-informed exposure-response relationships with small-area population data on disease occurrence, mortalities, and long-term average noise exposures from road, rail and aircraft sources. The results from the study have since been used as evidence in the House of Lords Inquiry into the ‘effects of artificial light and noise on human health’, and the work recently won the Noise Abatement Society 2024 John Connell Award for Innovation, recognising the contributions and importance of ‘Putting Noise on the Map’.
Jephcote C*, Clark SN*, Hansell AL, Jones N, Chen Y, Blackmore C, Eminson K, Evans M, Gong X, Adams K, Rodgers G, B Fenech**, J Gulliver**. Spatial assessment of the attributable burden of disease due to transportation noise in England. Environment International. 2023 Aug 1;178:107966.
*Joint first authors
** Joint senior authors
Clark SN, Jepchote C, Gulliver J, Hansell A, Fenech B. Spatial and socioeconomic inequalities of road-traffic noise and attributable burden of disease in London, England. ICBEN conference paper, Belgrade, June 2023.
Biography – Sierra Clark
Sierra is a Lecturer in Population Health at City St. George’s, University of London, having previously worked as an environmental public health scientist at the UK Health Security Agency in the Noise and Air Quality teams as well as with Health Canada.
Her research interests and expertise are in environmental epidemiology, with a focus on the health effects of exposure to air pollution and noise in indoor and outdoor environments. Sierra also has an interest in using novel approaches for measuring and modelling spatial distributions of environmental exposures as well as quantifying environmental burdens of disease to inform policy and practice. Sierra serves on the committee for the UK Indoor Environmental Group (UKIEG) and contributes to the European Chapter of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.
