Exposure to noise—especially during sleep—has been shown to have a detrimental effect on stress, sleeping patterns and cardio-vascular health.
We will investigate the relationship between qualities of tyre-generated traffic noise and adverse health effects for those regularly exposed to this noise in their homes, through experimental sleep studies with healthy volunteers.
We will determine how noise levels and their timing, and tonality of noise impact physiological and metabolic markers for cardio-vascular health in experimental sleep studies with healthy volunteers subjected to representative synthesised noise. The use of physiological and metabolic markers provides a more reliable and reproducible outcome than reliance on self-reported sleep disturbances.
Tonality will be one of the psycho-acoustic parameters of the noise the study subjects will be exposed to—it has shown to impact the degree of annoyance in waking exposure studies and is a parameter that is influenced by tyre design.
We will determine effect sizes of test parameters with 95% confidence intervals. We can’t yet quantify expected effect sizes since the experimental paradigm is brand new. Achievement of this objective will be evaluated by the acceptance for publication of a scientific paper on the study and its results by a well-regarded journal.