The Effect of Different Kinds of Noise on the Quality of Sleep Under the Controlled Conditions

Effects of noise from non-traffic-related ambient sources on sleep: Review of the literature of 1990-2010

“…Meaningful sounds from leisure and neighbor noise showed a tendency to disturb sleep according to the national inventory studies from the Netherlands, the LARES study and the different Japanese studies of Kuwano et al and Namba et al [8,22,[27][28][29] The national inventory study 1998 from the Netherlands detected also small sleep disturbances due to church bell and mosque noise and noise from recycling of bottles. [8] The study of Sasazawa et al displayed mixed results as regards meaningful leisure and neighbor noise.…”

“…The studies looking at the effects of the low-frequency part of neighborhood noise mainly suggested a detrimental effect on sleep. [22,24,[27][28][29] As regards the effects of animal noises on sleep, two studies showed sleep disturbance, but another study displayed opposite results. [8,22,24] …”

“…Regarding the research question as to whether ambient noise has an effect on sleep, we can cautiously draw the following conclusions: Omlin, et al: Effects of non-traffic related ambient sources on sleep [7] Meaningful sounds such as those emanating from leisure and neighbor noise seem in most cases to lead to sleep disturbance, [3,7,8,[18][19][20]22,23,[27][28][29] an exception being the study of Sasazawa et al, [24] where voices, animal noises, noise from bars and restaurants did not seem to have any effect on sleep. The findings on door slamming and sleep disturbance were compared with aircraft noise.…”

“…[28] The results of the investigation showed that when exposed to either karaoke or talk at the same low equivalent level of sound pressure, about 70% of the participants were disturbed when falling asleep and 20% could not even fall asleep after switching off the sound. As regards air conditioning noise, more than 95% of the participants could fall asleep within an hour and about 10% fewer for traffic noise.…”

“…Noise presentation Time when switching off the minidisk player, questionnaire Kuwano et al [28] Field study with presented sounds [29] Field study with presented sounds (installed either inside or outside the house), 93 people from two preselected areas responded to a randomly mailed questionnaire that included questions on sleep. [12] The exact measurement of the noise levels was not mentioned.…”