Iran Occupational Health

Background and aims: Based on various studies, the noise can have a significant effect on human health. Annoyance is the most common bad effect that may be caused by the noise and traffic. Awareness of costs of traffic noise has various advantages in decision making and on control measures to reduce the traffic noise. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the costs of traffic noise on the residents' health in city of Tabriz in 2011.

Methods: Contingent valuation method (CVM) was used to obtain willingness to pay (WTP). First, the effects of noise on human, including individual dissatisfaction to noise, harassment and other effects of traffic noise were obtained using a questionnaire. Two methods were then applied to obtain the costs of noise effect on human health. One, directly from investigation of the relationship between WTP and annoyance caused by noise, and the other one, by investigating the relationship between annoyance and Level day-evening-night (Lden). The results were then compared with the determined thresholds.

 Results: The results showed that 60% of individuals show medium and medium to high levels of annoyance. For groups with moderate annoyance (39% of cases) the amount of Lden was 67 dB with 65,593,125€, for groups with high level annoyance, Lden was 71 dB with the cost of 38,513,160 €.

Conclusion: Since the burden of the costs’ of noise placed on the people of Tabriz are so heavy, control measures are suggested for policy makers that may yield worthy results in the long term.