gms | German Medical Science

Chronic exposure to aircraft noise can cause or aggravate mental illness. As part of the “Environmental noise guidelines for the European Region”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) summarised the scientific evidence for traffic noise-related health effects up to 2015 in several systematic reviews. The aim of this study was to update the evidence. For this, a systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted including literature from 01 January 2015 to 03 February 2023. The study was registered a priori at PROSPERO.

Eligibility criteria were met for the following outcomes: annoyance (n=6), sleep disorders and sleep disturbance (n=4), depression (n=2) and mental health problems (n=2). We pooled the studies from our literature update with those from the WHO systematic reviews for our meta-analysis. The relative risk of aircraft exposure per 10 dB Lden was RR=3.28 (95% CI 2.72- 3.97) for high annoyance and RR=1.83 (95% CI 1.13-2.97) for high sleep disturbance. For high sleep disturbance, we also differentiated according to type of question asked: The results suggest a significant association only for questions that specifically mention aircraft noise (RR=2.00, 95% CI 1.19-3.35) but not for questions that do not mention aircraft noise (RR=1.13, 95% CI 0.93-1.39).

In addition, we performed a meta-analysis of the aircraft noise-related risk of depression based on studies from our literature update and a recent systematic review. The risk of aircraft noise-related depression was statistically significantly increased by 14% per 10 dB Lden (95% CI 1.12-1.16).

Our results strengthen the assumption that chronic exposure to aircraft noise affects mental health and well-being. Preventive strategies should be implemented and strengthened to protect the health of the general population.

The study was funded by the Aircraft Noise Commission (FLK) Frankfurt.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.