Journal of Oceanography and Marine Research
Open Access

Characterization And Evaluation Of Noise Pollution In A Tourist Coastal Town

International Conference on Coastal Zones

May 16-18, 2016 Osaka, Japan

J C Fortes, R S�¡nchez and J P Bolivar

University of Huelva, Spain

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Oceanography

Abstract :

There are also many studies on noise pollution in road traffic of big cities conducted in the last thirty years demonstrating that traffic is the main source of noise in the urban environments. Thus, the ambient noise levels have increased since the 1980s mainly due to increased traffic. Thus more than 50 percent of the European population is exposed to noise levels (Leq) over 55 dBA due to road transport. The impact that noise has on the health of people is widely known from the large number of studies that have been conducted in different fields of medicine. But the specific case of coastal tourist towns has been very little studied. They have significant increases in the volume of traffic during the summer compared to the winter (one order of magnitude in many cases), which results in a dramatic increase in noise. This increased noise will produce a degradation of the acoustic environment during the summer season, which is the opposite of what people are looking for during their holidays. The A-5052 road is the main source of noise pollution in El Portil, generating during a summer 24 h period a continuous equivalent level about 4�5 dBA higher than in winter. 2) The background levels existing during the night periods reach 37 dBA, corresponding to a period of 5 hours (1:00 to 6:00 h), while in summer they reach 40 dBA for a duration of only 1 hour (3:30 to 4:30 h). 3) While on winter nights (1:00 to 6:00 h) there is only one source of noise, corresponding to the background noise, on summer nights three sources of noise were identified: background noise, the recreational activities of the tourists, and traffic noise from the road. 4) In both winter and summer, noisy activities begin at 5:00 h and last until 8:00 am, dominated by traffic for the beginning of the working day.

Biography :

Email: jcfortes@uhu.es