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 12 October 2008 00:36 BST

UK cities mapped for noise

Friday, 26 Oct 2007 12:38
Birmingham is one of the cities being mapped for noise
British cities are among almost 150 large urban areas in Europe to be mapped for noise pollution.

The cities across the EU are to be monitored for noise under the environmental noise directive and noise action plans have to be submitted to the European Commission by July 2008.

Among those to have been mapped is Birmingham, which has found noise levels are "undesirably high" in many populated areas.

John Hinton, the man in charge of Birmingham city council's noise mapping project, told the Today programme that this was the first time it had been possible to produce accurate noise exposure data in relation to where people live.

"Noise mapping is a process whereby you build a noise model of a city, the city of Birmingham for example, in a computer and then you use computer software to generate noise levels from the various sources; in particular in Birmingham it's been road traffic noise, railway noise and aircraft noise," he said.

"And then you can link those noise levels to where people live and produce noise exposure data."

He added that provisional estimates suggest that "between a quarter and a third of the population of Birmingham are living in areas where noise levels are undesirably high".

But Environmental Protection UK believes that the problem of high noise levels is still not being treated as seriously as other environmental concerns.

The charity's noise specialist Mary Stevens told the same programme that noise was something of a 'Cinderella subject'.

"It's a big problem," she said. "If you talk to anybody about their local environment, noise is always a thing that comes into it, but noise management isn't really being taken seriously in other areas, in planning and in transport policy," she said.

"And that noise is increasingly being linked to health impacts."

And she warned: "There's a lot of work to be done before July."End of story


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