Effects of road traffic noise on the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases: The case of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Road traffic noise is a growing challenge for human health in the last decades. World Health Organization (WHO) summarized the scientific evidence on side effects of noise on public health and wellbeing since 1999 in its publication "Guidelines for community noise". The WHO's documentation was completed in 2009 with the Night Noise Guidelines for Europe and in 2011 with the Burden of disease from environmental noise highlighting the negative effects of environmental noise on health. In this paper, we studied and presented the overall noise levels and the exposure of the population in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. The estimation of the exposure to road traffic noise was based on the census data for a 15-year time period (e.g. 2000-2015). The quantification of the environmental burden of cardiovascular diseases, due to urban traffic noise, is calculated in terms of DALYs. The calculation is based on the morbidity and mortality data from the hypertensive, ischemic heart, and cerebrovascular diseases of the total population. Our analysis proved that the road traffic noise in Thessaloniki causes almost 2000 DALYs lost in the total population each year. Also, the exposure to road traffic noise was estimated by three measuring points, two of them located in the urban Thessaloniki (a high traffic highway and a residential area) and the third one situated in one urban background area in the urban outskirts of Thessaloniki. The noise levels were measured for a 24-h period during a 3 year time period for every measuring point. The imposed WHO noise levels were exceeded in both high traffic highway and residential areas for almost the whole time of the measurement period.