Too much residents of The Netherlands experience noise nuisance, part of them from aviation. The reason is simple: one thirth of all houses is built on a noisy location, says research from Dutch news tv RTL Nieuws. Too much noise makes people ill.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published new guidelines for environmental noise. Road traffic can produce a maximum of 53 decibels, trains 54 dB, but aviation noise may not exceed 45 decibels.
RTL Nieuws has compared the new guildelines with data from the Dutch health institute RIVM and from the governmental basic registration database for addresses and buildings. From this analyses they learned that 37 percent of houses experience a noise level of more than 55 dB. This counts up to 3 million houses.
Noise kills
Too much noise is a huge problem, says WHO. It does not only make people ill, it can even kill people.
“If you add all numbers one can conclude that in The Netherlands hundreds of people get a heart attack each year by living in an area with too much noise”, says Fred Woudenberg, head of the environmental department of the city of Amsterdam.