Contribution of outdoor noise-induced health risk in schools located in urbanized arid country

Patrick Amoatey; Issa Al-Harthy; Diawuo Amankona; Stella Douban; Azizallah Izady; Mingjie Chen; Khalifa Al-Jabri; Mubarak Al-Alawi

doi:10.1007/s11356-023-25643-z

Contribution of outdoor noise-induced health risk in schools located in urbanized arid country

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Apr;30(16):48107-48119. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-25643-z. Epub 2023 Feb 8.

Authors

Patrick Amoatey^{1

2}, Issa Al-Harthy³, Diawuo Amankona⁴, Stella Douban⁵, Azizallah Izady⁶, Mingjie Chen⁶, Khalifa Al-Jabri¹, Mubarak Al-Alawi¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Al-Khoudh, P.C, 123, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.
² School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, 288 Herston Road, Herston, Queensland, Australia.
³ Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Al-Khoudh, P.C, 123, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. aissa@squ.edu.om.
⁴ Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Biosciences, College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, PMB, Kumasi, Ghana.
⁵ Department Sociology and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, PMB, Kumasi, Ghana.
⁶ Water Research Center, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.

PMID: 36752915
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-023-25643-z

Abstract

Ambient noise pollution is deemed as one of the major growing public health issues, especially in developing countries. Therefore, it is crucial to assess the impact of noise pollution on public health. The aim of this study is to investigate the health risk of noise exposure levels in three schools: Kaab Bin Zeyd of Basic Education (school A), Hail Al-Awamour Girls school (school B), and Al-Fikr School (school C) in Muscat, Oman. The study employed a survey of 300 students, dose-response models, and regression models to quantify health risk and to determine the relationship between noise levels and perceived noise annoyance sources. The study found average noise levels (L_Aeq) of school A (70.03±8.21 dBA), school B (69.54±7.75 dBA), and school C (55.95± 5.67 dBA) to be higher than WHO's outdoor schools environment standard of 55 dBA and European (EN16798-1) classroom's critical limits of 30-34 dBA. Most of the students from schools A (30.9%), B (33.3%), and C (63%) have reported noise produced from traffic as extremely annoyed compared to aircraft of 15.4%, 11.5%, and 27.2%, respectively. Regression analysis shows that perceived traffic noise was strongly correlated with L_Aeq in school A (R² =0.481), B (R² =0.121), and C (R² = 0.132) when compared with other subjective noise types. The health risk assessment results show that the percentage of highly annoyed (%HA) was higher in school A (15.2%) and school B (14.95%) than in school C (8.18%). The estimated highly sleep disturbed (%HSD) based on mean noise levels were almost the same in schools A (15.62%) and B (15.19%) but far higher compared to school C (6.01%). However, there was an association between the mean noise exposure levels and the risk of developing ischemic heart diseases (IHD) in school A (RR= 1.172, 95% CI: 1.020-1.334), school B (RR=1.167, 95% CI: 1.020-1.325), and school C (RR=1.051, 95% CI: 1.006-1.095). Moreover, attributable risk percentage (AR%) for school A (AR% =14.675, 95% CI: 2.028-25.037), school B (AR% =14.310, 95% CI: 1.960-24.528), and school C (AR% = 4.852, 95% CI:0.596-8.742) have shown that a substantial portion of the population could be prevented from developing IHD. It is expected that findings of the study can be applied in other arid regions with sprawl urbanized built environments.

Keywords: Annoyance, Oman; Health risk; Noise; Schools; Survey.

MeSH terms

Aircraft
Environmental Exposure
Female
Humans
Noise, Transportation*
Oman
Schools
Surveys and Questionnaires