What a city's noise costs, per year

Enter how many residents live in each day-evening-night band. The calculator applies the World Health Organization's exposure-response functions to estimate the annual health cost, in healthy years lost and in euro.

Residents exposed, by L_den band (thousands)

55–60

60–65

65–70

70–75

≥ 75

€717M / year

9,760 healthy life-years (DALYs) lost each year

Annoyance Sleep disturbance Heart disease

Value of a healthy life-year €73,500

Mean dwelling value €300,000

Separately — capital, not annual flow

€4.7bn in housing value discounted by noise (0.5% per dB above 55, after the hedonic literature). A one-off stock, not added to the annual cost above.

Method. Highly-annoyed and highly-sleep-disturbed shares from the WHO road-traffic exposure-response functions; heart-disease burden apportioned from the European agency's outcome split. Disability weights 0.02 (annoyance) and 0.07 (sleep). The three outcomes shown are the best-established; the agency's fuller figure adds diabetes, cognitive and other effects, which is why its Europe-wide total runs higher. Health cost = healthy years lost × the value per year set above.