Recommendation 4

The UK should seek opportunities to collaborate with similar countries, sharing research data and methodologies. Alongside these efforts, DEFRA should commission and fund a research programme into noise and health. This should include: large-scale epidemiological studies, including long-term longitudinal studies, which can make use of international big data; laboratory-based studies establishing mechanisms for health impacts; field studies establishing the indoor exposure to noise, which can contribute to mapping the indoor exposure to noise; interdisciplinary studies to understand the variation in response caused by non-acoustic factors; modelling and experimental studies into the health effects of interventions to reduce noise; and whether alternative metrics for noise, including pitch and intermittency, should be measured and used to better understand health outcomes.