Impact of noise on people and the A-weighting network.

Abstract

Noise exposure causes many adverse effects on health, including auditory alterations, nonauditory physiological effects, and psycho-social consequences. The extent of each effect depends, among other factors, on the frequency content of the acoustic stimulus. This work analyzes the sound frequencies capable of inducing each one of the effects of noise on humans. The main goal was to evaluate the efficiency of the A-weighting network from the point of view of health. In this direction, an extensive bibliographic review about the effects of noise on people and the frequencies that eventually cause the effects were carried out. The results have shown that some serious effects on health of high noise levels are due to the low-frequency range. Consequently, it is expected that the A-weighting network would not be adequate for evaluating the global effect of noise on humans, in particular when the noise has very high emission levels. It is recommended to measure and to save the third-octave-band noise spectrum or even to record the sound signal without any compression or alteration. It allows a better understanding of the cause-effect relationship and the possibility to apply other frequency weighting networks in the future.