Perceptions of health effects of night aircraft noise

This paper describes a social scientific study into perceptions of aircraft noise at night around a number of UK airports. The study aimed to identify the nature and extent to which people perceive their lives are impacted by aircraft noise at night and to examine the association between health, noise sensitivity, noise disturbed sleep, personality and perceptions of aircraft noise at night. The study involved focus groups, an interview survey and a postal survey. The results show that at some sites at some airports, aircraft noise at night causes a moderate level of disturbance. A relatively low proportion felt their health to be very much affected but a larger proportion felt their health to be somewhat affected by aircraft noise at night. For the covering abstract see ITRD E107776.