Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of clinical morbidity and mortality. The main suggested pathway from annoyance to
illness has been through a generalized stress response (Babisch, 1998); this is discussed
in a later section 'Stress response'.
Recent results from a study around Schiphol Airport (Franssen et al, 1999)
showed a higher than expected prevalence of serious aircraft noise annoyance in
comparison with previous studies both at Schiphol and in other countries. The
increased higher annoyance was explained by increased sensitivity to noise and con-
cern about safety and the influence of the ongoing political and social debate about
expansion of the airport.
Complaints
Besides indicating annoyance with aircraft noise by responding to noise pollution
surveys, there are a number of more direct behavioural responses that give indications
of residents' reduced well-being and quality of life. The potential direct action that
residents can take includes (Gillen and Levesque, 1994):
•
undertaking noise attenuation measures in the home;
•
complaining to the airport and/or environmental health authorities;
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relocation;
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civil litigation;
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canvassing and media support;
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organizing political opposition.
One response to unwanted intrusive environmental noise is to complain about the
cause of the annoyance. Concern about the impact of transportation noise on health
and well-being, and the consequent restrictions on airport operations and develop-
ments, have been driven mainly by complainers and opposition from the communi-
ties affected. However, there has been apparently little effort to explore complaint
data scientifically and to investigate the link between complaining, annoyance and
ill health. A constant dilemma for regulatory bodies is how representative are certain
vocal minorities of the population at large? Are complainers representative of the
community and the 'tip of the iceberg' with a genuine complaint; or are they mainly
composed of representatives of vulnerable groups or individuals from the commu-
nity who readily complain about many issues? This is not a trivial matter as com-
plainers and action groups sometimes have considerable leverage in terms of their
ability to determine the outcome of official inquiries into planning applications for
increases in airport infrastructure and operations.
There is some controversy about how useful complaints are in helping to quan-
tify and provide insights into the problem. Some studies conclude that noise com-
plaints do not sufficiently measure the community response to aircraft noise and, as a
consequence, do not represent the size and scope of the problem (Luz et al, 1983; Bor-
sky, 1979). However, other studies (Stockbridge and Lee, 1973; Gillen and Levesque,
1994; Bronzaft et al, 1998; van Wiechen et al, 2002; Hume et al, 2001a, b, c) conclude
that complaints can provide useful insights into the problem of noise disturbance.
The present authors consider that a well-structured complaints system operating in
