PurposeSeveral damages have been associated with the exposure of human beings to noise. These include auditory effects, i.e., hearing impairment, but also non-auditory physiological ones such as hypertension and ischemic heart disease, or psychological ones such as annoyance, depression, sleep disturbance, limited performance of cognitive tasks or inadequate cognitive development. Noise can also interfere with intended activities, both in daytime and nighttime. ISO 14'040 also indicated the necessity of introducing noise, together with other less developed impact categories, in a complete LCA study, possibly changing the results of many LCA studies already available. The attempts available in the literature focused on the integration of transportation noise in LCA. Although being considered the most frequent source of intrusive impact, transportation noise is not the only type of noise that can have a malign impact on public health. Several other sources of noise such as industrial or occupational need to be taken into account to have a complete consideration of noise into LCA. Major life cycle inventories (LCI) typically do not contain data on noise emissions yet and characterisation factors are not yet clearly defined. The aim of the present paper is to briefly review what is already available in the field and propose a new framework for the consideration of human health impacts of any type of noise that could be of interest in the LCA practice, providing indications for the introduction of noise in LCI and analysing what data is already available and, in the form of a research agenda, what other resources would be needed to reach a complete coverage of the problem.Main featuresThe literature production related to the impacts of noise on human health has been analysed, with considerations of impacts caused by transportation noise as well as occupational and industrial noise. The analysis of the specialist medical literature allowed for a better understanding of how to deal with the epidemiological findings from an LCA perspective and identify areas still missing dose–response relations. A short review of the state-of-science in the field of noise and LCA is presented with an expansion to other contributions in the field subsequent to the comprehensive work by Althaus et al. (2009a; 2009b). Focusing on the analogy between toxicological analysis of pollutants and noise impact evaluation, an alternative approach is suggested, which is oriented to the consideration of any type of noise in LCA and not solely of transportation noise. A multi-step framework is presented as a method for the inclusion of noise impacts on human health in LCA.Results and discussionA theoretical structural framework for the inclusion of noise impacts in LCA is provided as a basis for future modelling expansions in the field. Rather than evaluating traffic/transportation noise, the method focuses on the consideration of the noise level and its impact on human health, regardless of the source producing the noise in an analogous manner as considered in the fields of toxicology and common noise evaluation practices combined. The resulting framework will constitute the basis for the development of a more detailed mathematical model for the inclusion of noise in LCA. The toxicological background and the experience of the analysis of the release of chemicals in LCA seem to provide sufficient ground for the inclusion of noise in LCA: taken into account the physical differences and the uniqueness of noise as an impact, the procedure applied to the release of chemicals during a product life cycle is key for a valuable inclusion of noise in the LCA logic.ConclusionsIt is fundamental for the development of research in the field of LCA and noise to consider any type of noise. Further studies are needed to contribute to the inclusion of noise sources and noise impacts in LCA. In this paper, a structure is proposed that will be expanded and adapted in the future and which forms the basic framework for the successive modelling phase.

中文翻译：

---

将噪声影响纳入 LCA 的总体框架

目的一些损害与人类暴露于噪音有关。这些包括听觉效应，即听力障碍，以及非听觉生理效应，例如高血压和缺血性心脏病，或心理效应，例如烦恼、抑郁、睡眠障碍、认知任务的有限表现或认知发展不足。噪音还会干扰白天和夜间的预期活动。ISO 14'040 还指出有必要在完整的 LCA 研究中引入噪声以及其他欠发达的影响类别，这可能会改变许多已有的 LCA 研究的结果。文献中可用的尝试集中在 LCA 中交通噪声的整合。虽然被认为是侵入性影响的最常见来源，交通噪音并不是唯一一种会对公共健康产生不利影响的噪音。需要考虑其他几个噪声源，例如工业或职业噪声，以便将噪声完全纳入 LCA。主要生命周期清单 (LCI) 通常不包含噪声排放数据，特征因子尚未明确定义。本文件的目的是简要回顾该领域已有的内容，并提出一个新的框架来考虑 LCA 实践中可能感兴趣的任何类型的噪声对人类健康的影响，为引入LCI 中的噪音并分析哪些数据已经可用，以及以研究议程的形式，还需要哪些其他资源才能完全覆盖问题。主要特征分析了与噪声对人类健康影响相关的文献，并考虑了交通噪声以及职业和工业噪声造成的影响。对专业医学文献的分析有助于更好地理解如何从 LCA 的角度处理流行病学发现，并确定仍然缺少剂量-反应关系的领域。在 Althaus 等人的综合工作之后，对噪声和 LCA 领域的科学现状进行了简短回顾，并扩展到该领域的其他贡献。（2009a；2009b）。针对污染物毒理学分析与噪声影响评估之间的类比，提出了一种替代方法，它旨在考虑 LCA 中的任何类型的噪声，而不仅仅是运输噪声。提出了一个多步骤框架作为在 LCA 中包含噪声对人类健康影响的方法。结果和讨论 提供了在 LCA 中包含噪声影响的理论结构框架，作为该领域未来建模扩展的基础。该方法不是评估交通/运输噪声，而是侧重于考虑噪声水平及其对人类健康的影响，而不管产生噪声的来源如何，其方式与毒理学领域和常见噪声评估实践相结合的方式类似。由此产生的框架将构成开发更详细的数学模型以在 LCA 中包含噪声的基础。LCA 中化学物质释放的毒理学背景和分析经验似乎为将噪声包含在 LCA 中提供了充分的依据：考虑到噪声作为影响的物理差异和独特性，应用于释放的程序产品生命周期中化学品的数量是将噪声纳入 LCA 逻辑的关键。结论 考虑任何类型的噪声是 LCA 和噪声领域研究发展的基础。需要进一步研究以促进将噪声源和噪声影响纳入 LCA。在本文中，提出了一种结构，该结构将在未来进行扩展和调整，并形成后续建模阶段的基本框架。