Abstract:

This paper provides a brief review of field research on nighttime sleep disturbance in residential communities which has been conducted in the United States over nearly the past decade. It compares the research methodology for studying sleep disturbance that has evolved during this series of research projects with the research approaches predominantly used in Europe. The focus is on transportation noise sources, primarily aircraft noise. It also offers a new dose--response relationship based primarily on the U.S. field data collected around civilian airports and military airbases. The new sleep disturbance prediction curve is recommended as an update to the interim curve adopted by the Federal Interagency Committee on Noise (FICON) in 1992. At that time, there was a lack of consensus concerning whether both laboratory and field research data should be used in the development of a new prediction curve. Thus the FICON curve combined the major field and laboratory data published in the U.S. up to that time in an admittedly interim curve. The currently proposed new prediction curve uses only data from field studies and incorporates some of the European research data.