Effects of community noise on urban population

ABSTRACT

Community noise or environmental noise is a noise produced by various activities except the one produced by industry. Its main sources are transportation [air, road and rail], construction, public works and human activities. The indoor source of community noise is ventilation system, neighbors, office machines, home appliances and leisure activities. Health effects caused by noise include hearing loss, sleep disturbance annoyance besides many others. To find out the range of effects of community noise [sleep, fatigue and irritation] on housewives of urban population and see its association with age, education and other factors. This was a Questionnaire based exploratory community based cross-sectional survey conducted on 252 housewives selected at random from six localities of three towns i.e. Saddar, Lyari and Jamshed town of Karachi. Data was analyzed on computer package SPSS version 10. In this study 39% housewives were immigrants from India [muhajir], 28% Sindhi, 14% Punjabi, 9% Pashto and 6% were other ethnic groups, mean age of housewives was 35.3 years. It was found that majority 81.01% of housewives were able to listen to television programs in normal volume while 16.0% were listening the same programs at high volume. Similarly most [83.11%] housewives were able to listen to telephonic conversation easily in their homes, 22[8.7%] housewives had been treated for ear problems in the past, 20 [7.9%] gave history of impaired hearing and 1 was using a hearing aid. About 95.2% housewives were speaking in normal volume and 54[21.4%] were using various kinds of medications for chronic medical illnesses. Three point Lickert scale was used to measure the effect of noise for sleep disturbance, fatigue and irritation and it was seen that 34.1% housewives experienced severe sleep disturbance, and about the same percentage 33.3% felts severe fatigue and 33.7% irritation due to noise. All these issues were more frequent in women age over 30 years then those aged less then 30 years. The most common cause of noise pollution was human activities. Housewives were avoiding exposure to noise by moving to quiet corners of their homes and keeping the doors and windows closed. The study showed that almost 33% housewives experienced severe sleep disturbances, fatigue and irritation due to community noise. The problem was more pronounced in housewives who were over 30 years of age. Commonest cause of community noise is the one produced by human activities followed by traffic noise