Comment on Gjestland, T. A Systematic Review of the Basis for WHO's New Recommendation for Limiting Aircraft Noise Annoyance. Int. J. Env. Res. Pub. Health 2018, 15, 2717

Abstract

In his recent discussion paper in this journal, Truls Gjestland attempts a "systematic review", as he calls it, of the evidence base for aircraft noise annoyance, consolidated in a meta-analysis by Guski et al. that informed the recommended guideline value of 45 dB L_den in the recently published World Health Organization (WHO) Environmental Noise Guidelines. He questions the validity of the presented evidence, as "some of the referenced studies have not been conducted according to standardized methods, and the selection of respondents is not representative of the general airport population." Gjestland maintains that the new WHO Guidelines are based on a questionable selection of existing aircraft noise studies. Our reply comments on the arguments of Gjestland and refutes most of his critique.

Figure 1

Exposure–response curves for aircraft noise annoyance responses in the WHO dataset [2]. “Highly annoyed” refers to respondents using ≥73% of the annoyance response scale. The red data points and regression line refer to study size weighting according to sample size; the black data points and curve refer to the same dataset without study size weighting.

Figure 2

Individual exposure–response curves for aircraft noise annoyance responses in the 12 studies of the full WHO dataset [2]. % Highly Annoyed (%HA) refers to respondents using ≥73% of the annoyance response scale (same definition as in Figure 1). No weighting according to sample size is applied here.