The impact of community noise pollution on health and wellbeing is a subject of public health policies and its economic impact is representing a burden for individuals as well as for the society. Since the main source of noise is traffic, the public actions are mainly focused on the traffic noise control arrangements. As a counterweight to the costs of these arrangements are financially expressed the changes in wellbeing and health of the affected inhabitants. This practice is known as Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) commonly with an emphasis on all stakeholders involvement. The input data for benefit calculations are: first from the models and later from the monitoring of changes in the level of noise and additionally from surveys among the affected inhabitants. The discrepancies in the results of objective measuring methods and subjective ability to perceive the change represent a source of uncertainties for the CBA. This effect can be observed from the data of community noise monitoring and surveys provided by National Institute of Public Health through the Subsystem III of the Environmental Health Monitoring system in the Czech Republic. Further the development of health valuation measures is provided as another source of uncertainties. The different sensitivity of psychological perception and technical monitoring in combination with uncertainties involved in economic valuation methods of changes in health are adding considerable uncertainties in the whole CBA concept and thus the economic emphasis in the justification process for the traffic noise abatement should be carefully interpreted.
展开▼
