Noise annoyance from stationary sources: Relationships with exposure metric day-evening-night level (DENL) and their confidence intervals

Relationships between exposure to noise [metric: day-evening-night levels (DENL)] from stationary sources (shunting yards, a seasonal industry, and other industries) and annoyance are presented. Curves are presented for expected annoyance score, the percentage highly annoyed (%HA, cutoff at 72 on a scale from 0 to 100), the percentage annoyed (%A, cutoff at 50 on a scale from 0 to 100), and the percentage (at least) a little annoyed (%LA, cutoff at 28 on a scale from 0 to 100). The estimates of the parameters of the relations are based on the data from a field study (N = 1875) at 11 locations (2 shunting yards, 1 seasonal industry, 8 other industries) in the Netherlands. With the same (yearly) DENL, the seasonal industry causes less annoyance than the other industries, while the other industries cause less annoyance than the shunting yards. It appears that annoyance caused by vibrations from shunting yards and annoyance caused by noise from through trains are (partly) responsible for the relatively high annoyance from shunting yards. The relatively low annoyance from the seasonal industry presumably is related to the presence of a relatively quiet period. Results for the two shunting yards and the seasonal industry are based on fewer data than the other industrial sources, and are indicative. The same patterns of influence of age and noise sensitivity that are generally found are also found in this study. For comparison, results regarding transportation sources are also given, including previously unpublished results for expected annoyance. (C) 2004 Acoustical Society of America.