Protective Noise Levels
Condensed Version of EPA Levels Document
PURPOSE
This publication is intended to complement the EPA’s “Levels Document,”* the 1974 report examining levels of environmental noise necessary to protect public health and welfare. It interprets the contents of the Levels Document in less technical terms for people who wish to better understand the concepts presented there, and how the protective levels were identified. In that sense, this publication may serve as an introduction, or a supplement, to the Levels Document.
*”Information on Levels of Environmental Noise Requisite to Protect Public Health and Welfare with an Adequate Margin of Safety,” EPA/ONAC 550/9-74-004, March, 1974.
INTRODUCTION
During the last 20 years there has been increasing concern with the quality of the environment. Along with air and water contaminants, noise has been recognized as a serious pollutant. As noise levels have risen, the effects of noise have become pervasive and more apparent.
Noise is defined as “unwanted sound.” In the context of protecting the public health and welfare, noise implies adverse effects on people and the environment. Noise causes hearing loss, interferes with human activities at home and work, and is in various ways injurious to people’s health and well-being. Although hearing loss is the most clearly measurable health hazard, noise is also linked to other physiological and psychological problems.
Noise annoys, awakens, angers and frustrates people. It disrupts communication and individual thoughts, and affects performance capability. Noise is one of the biological stressors associated with everyday life. Thus, the numerous effects of noise combine to detract from the quality of people’s lives and the environment.
Noise emanates from many different sources. Transportation noise, industrial noise, construction noise, household noise, and people and animal noise are all large-scale offenders. It is important, then, to examine the total range and combination of noise sources and not to focus unduly on any one source.
Through the Noise Control Act of 1972, Congress directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)to publish scientific information about the kind and extent of all identifiable effects of different qualities and quantities of noise. EPA was also directed to define acceptable levels under various conditions which would protect public health and welfare with an adequate margin of safety. The EPA collaborated with other Federal agencies and the scientific community to publish a “Levels Document,”* which would fulfill these requirements in the Noise Control Act.
Initial public reaction was quite favorable, but it was discovered that the document was too complex, too technical, and too long for some audiences. This summary presents the contents of the Levels Document in less technical terms. It defines the basic measurement of noise, analyzes noise exposure, and presents the best understood effects of noise – hearing damage, speech interference, and annoyance -using information contained in the Levels Document. The identified protective levels are then summarized, followed by a number of often-asked questions and answers about the Levels Document.
No attempt has been made here to incorporate recent research findings pertaining to effects of noise on people. Considerable new information has developed since initial publication of the Levels Document, including new findings on community response to noise, sleep disruption, and speech interference. Summaries and analyses of some recent information on noise effects are available through EPA and other agencies.
*”Information on Levels of Environmental Noise Requisite to Protect Public Health and Welfare with an Adequate Margin of Safety”, EPA 550/9-74-004, March, 1974, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. 20460.
ABOUT SOUND
The sound we hear is the result of a sound source inducing vibration in the air. The vibration produces alternating band of relatively dense and sparse particles of air, spreading outward from the source in the same way as ripples do on water after a stone is thrown into it. The result of the movement of the particles is a fluctuation in the normal atmospheric pressure, or sound waves. These waves radiate in all directions from the source and may be reflected and scattered or, like other wave actions, may turn corners. When the source stops vibrating, the sound waves disappear almost instantaneously, and the sound ceases. The ear is extremely sensitive to sound pressure fluctuations, which are convened into auditory sensations.
Sound may be described in terms of three variables:
1. Amplitude (perceived as loudness)
2. Frequency (perceived as pitch)
3. Time pattern
Amplitude
Sound pressure is the amplitude or measure of the difference between atmospheric pressure (with no sound present) and the total pressure (with sound present). Although there are other measures of sound amplitude, sound pressure is the fundamental measure and is the basic ingredient of the various measurement descriptors in the next section, “Measurement of Environmental Noise.”
The unit of sound pressure is the decibel (dB); thus it is said that a sound pressure level is a certain number of decibels. The decibel scale is a logarithmic scale, not a linear one such as the scale of length. A logarithmic scale is used because the range of sound intensities is so great that it is convenient to compress the scale to encompass all the sounds that need to be measured. The human ear has an extremely wide range of response to sound amplitude. Sharply painful sound is 10 million times greater in sound pressure than the least audible sound. In decibels, this 10 million to 1 ratio is simplified logarithmically to 140 dB.
Another unusual property of the decibel scale is that the sound pressure levels of two separate sounds are not directly (that is, arithmetically) additive. For example, if a sound of 70 dB is added to another sound of 70 dB, the total is only a 3-decibel increase (to 73 dB), not a doubling to 140 dB. Furthermore, if two sounds are of different levels, the lower level adds less to the higher as this difference increases. If the difference is as much as 10 dB, the lower level adds almost nothing to the higher level. In other words, adding a 60 decibel sound to a 70 decibel sound only increases the total sound pressure level less than one-half decibel.
Frequency
The rate at which a sound source vibrates, or makes the air vibrate, determines frequency. The unit of time is usually one second and the term “Hertz” (after an early investigator of the physics of sound) is used to designate the number of cycles per second.
The human ear and that of most animals has a wide range of response. Humans can identify sounds with frequencies from about 16 Hz (Hertz) to 20,000 Hz. Because pure tones are relatively rare in real-life situations, most sounds consist instead of a complex mixture of many frequencies.
Time Pattern
The temporal nature of sound may be described in terms of its pattern of time and level: continuity, fluctuation, impulsiveness, intermittency. Continuous sounds are those produced for relatively long periods at a constant level, such as the noise of a waterfall. Intermittent sounds are those which are produced for short periods, such as the ringing of a telephone or aircraft take-offs and landings. Impulse noises are sounds which are produced in an extremely short span of time, such as a pistol shot or a hand clap. Fluctuating sounds vary in level over time, such as the loudness of traffic sounds at a busy intersection.
Measurement of Environmental Noise: Sound Descriptors
EPA has adopted a system of four “sound descriptors” to summarize how people hear sound and to determine the impact of environmental noise on public health and welfare. These four descriptors are: the A-weighted Sound Level, A-weighted Sound Exposure Level, Equivalent Sound Level, and Day-Night
Sound Level. They are related but each is most useful for a particular type of measurement. The descriptors and some examples of their uses are described below.
A-weighted Sound Level
One’s ability to hear a sound depends greatly on the frequency composition of the sound. People hear sounds most readily when the predominant sound energy occurs at frequencies between 1000 and 6000 Hertz (cycles per second). Sounds at frequencies above 10,000 Hertz (such as high-pitched hissing) are much more difficult to hear, as are sounds at frequencies below about 100 Hz (such as a low rumble). To measure sound on a scale that approximates the way it is heard by people, more weight must be given to the frequencies that people hear more easily.
A method for weighting the frequency spectrum to mimic the human ear has been sought for years. Many different scales of sound measurement, including A-weighted sound level (and also B, C, D, and E-weighted sound levels) have evolved in this search. A-weighting was recommended by EPA to describe environmental noise because it is convenient to use, accurate for most purposes, and is used extensively throughout the world. Figure 1 shows the A-weighted levels of some environmental noises. Note that these ranges of measured values are the maximum sound levels.
The A-weighting of frequency also is used in the three descriptors discussed below. When used by itself, an A-weighted decibel value denotes either a sound level at a given, instant, a maximum level, or a steady-state level. The following three descriptors are used to summarize those levels which vary over time.
Sound Exposure Level
Since the levels of many sounds change from moment to moment, this variation must also be accounted for when measuring environmental noise. One method for measuring the changing magnitude of sound levels is to trace a line on a sheet of moving paper, so that the movement of the pen is proportional to the sound level in decibels. Figure 2 illustrates such a recording, about which several features are noteworthy. First, the sound level varies with time over a range of about 30 dB. Second, the sound appears to be characterized by a fairly steady-state lower level, upon which are superimposed sound levels associated with individual events. This fairly constant lower level is often called the background ambient sound level.
Each single event in Figure 2 may be partially characterized by its maximum level. It may also be partially characterized by its time pattern. In the example, the sound level of the aircraft is above that of the background ambient level for about a minute, whereas the sound levels from cars are above the background level for much less time.
The duration of sounds with levels that vary from moment to moment is more difficult to characterize. One way is to combine the maximum sound level with the length of time during which the sound level is greater than a certain number of decibels below the maximum level — for example, the number of seconds that the sound rises from 10 dB below maximum, as in Figure 3.
Equivalent Sound Level
Yet another method of quantifying the noise environment is to determine the value of a steady-state sound which has the same A-weighted sound energy as that contained in the time-varying sound. This is the third measurement descriptor, termed the Equivalent Sound Level (Leq). The Equivalent Sound Level is a single value of sound level for any desired duration, which includes all of the time-varying sound energy in the measurement period. In Figure 2, for example, the Leq equals about 58 dB, indicating that the amount of sound energy in all the peaks and valleys in the figure is equivalent to the energy in a continuous sound of 58 dB.
The major virtue of the Equivalent Sound Level is that it correlates reasonably well with the effects of noise on people, even for wide variations in environmental sound levels and time patterns. It is used when only the durations and levels of sound, and not their times of occurrence (day or night), are relevant. It is easily measurable by available equipment. It also is the basis of a fourth and final measurement descriptor of the total outdoor noise environment, the Day-Night Sound Level (Ldn).
Day-Night Sound Level
The Day-Night Sound Level is the A-weighted equivalent sound level for a 24-hour period with an additional 10 dB weighting imposed on the equivalent sound levels occurring during nighttime hours (10 pm to 7 am). Hence, an environment that has a measured daytime equivalent sound level of 60 dB and a measured nighttime equivalent sound level of 50 dB, can be said to have a weighted nighttime sound level of 60 dB (50 + 10) and an Ldn of 60 dB. Examples of measured Ldn values are shown in Figure 4.