Noise & health
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In order to determine the influence of noise sensitivity on sleep, subjective sleep quality, annoyance, and performance after nocturnal exposure to traffic noise, 12 women and 12 men (age range, 19-28 years) were observed during four consecutive nights over a three weeks period. After a habituation night, the participants were exposed with weekly permuted changes to air, rail and road traffic noise. ⋯ Correlations were found between noise sensitivity and subjective sleep quality in terms of worsened restoration, decreased calmness, difficulty to fall asleep, and body movements. The results suggest that alterations of subjective evaluation of sleep were determined by physical parameters of the noise but modified by individual factors like noise sensitivity.