Social Inequalities in Environmental Noise Exposure: A Review of Evidence in the WHO European Region

Abstract

Environmental noise is an important public health problem, being among the top environmental risks to health. The burden of noise exposure seems to be unequally distributed in societies. Up to now there is fragmentary evidence regarding which social groups are most affected. The aim of this review was to systematically assess published evidence on social inequalities in environmental noise exposure in the WHO European Region, taking different sociodemographic and socioeconomic dimensions as well as subjective and objective measures of environmental noise exposure into account. Articles published in English in a peer reviewed journal between 2010 and 2017 were included in the review. Eight studies were finally included in the review, four of them analysed aggregated data and four analysed individual data. Though results of social inequalities in noise exposures were mixed between and within studies, there was a trend that studies using indicators of material deprivation and deprivation indices showed higher environmental noise exposures in groups with lower socioeconomic position. More research on the social distribution of environmental noise exposure on a small spatial scale is needed, taking into account aspects of vulnerability and procedural justice.