Proposal for assessing the effectiveness of noise policies

During the last half of the 20th century, most of the developed countries of the world have been addressing noise as an environmental and occupational problem, and have been working to develop noise control and exposure policies and related noise control technologies. Since the 1970s, the United States has been an international leader in these efforts, although more recently significant advances have been made elsewhere, particularly by the European Commission. However, little is known about how effective various noise policies and regulations have been in controlling the noise exposure of the populations which they are intended to protect. This paper proposes a national program to address this issue. The first phase involves the collection and cataloging of noise policy regulations and related guidelines and, for the most part, has already been completed by the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering, including a comprehensive index of U.S. noise policies. The second phase would involve developing a baseline of noise exposure estimates for various community environments. The third phase would determine the long-term effectiveness of noise policies in controlling noise exposure by examining the changes in various noise exposures and noise effects over time.