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What Causes What
SMOKE− DECREASES

Nighttime transportation noise → Sleep duration and regularity

Higher Nighttime transportation noise decreases Sleep duration and regularity.

In a 2022 update of the WHO sleep review, each extra 10 dB of night-time road, rail, or aircraft noise raised the odds of being highly sleep disturbed about two- to three-fold when the question named the noise, across 36 observational studies and 173,160 responses. Nobody randomized the street.

Meta-analysis · Low · N=173160

The association disappears when you account for other factors, like socioeconomic status or healthy-user bias.

Mechanism

Night-time sound can wake you, cut slow-wave sleep, or make falling asleep harder. The surveys mostly ask whether noise disturbed sleep. When the question names the source, the odds rise with Lnight. When it does not, the association shrinks. Smith, Cordoza, and Basner updated the WHO 2018 review. They added 11 studies (109,070 responses) to the original 25 (64,090). For questions that named the noise, GRADE was moderate: aircraft OR 2.18, road 2.52, railway 2.97 per 10 dB Lnight. For generic sleep questions, GRADE was low to very low: aircraft 1.52, road 1.14, railway 1.17 (the interval includes 1). At 40 dB the new curves still matched WHO. At high aircraft levels they sat above the old curve. Schubert asked 5,670 Leipzig adults in LIFE-Adult Wave 2 (2018-2021) the ISO high-sleep-disturbance items, with 2012 façade levels. Road OR 2.86, rail 2.67, aircraft 19.66 per 10 dB Lnight, adjusted for age, sex, and SES. About 2.7 percent were highly disturbed by road, 1.2 percent by rail, 2.0 percent by aircraft. Nobody in that sample sat at 52 dB aircraft or more. The aircraft odds sit on a thin tail. Perron telephoned 4,336 Montreal adults in 2014. Sleep disturbed by outdoor noise in the past four weeks: 12.4 percent. Road 4.2, aircraft 1.5, rail 1.1. Disturbance rose with LNight from a land-use regression and with proximity to a road, rail line, or airport contour. Perron 2012 reviewed 12 aircraft-noise papers. Moderate- and high-quality studies reported awakenings, less slow-wave sleep, or more sleep medication. Most of that file is laboratory nights in healthy adults. Pirrera 2010 is a methods review of nocturnal road noise: objective versus subjective sleep, and noise sensitivity as a modifier.

Caveats

The stamp is smoke because nobody randomized the street. A new edge from surveys and reviews publishes as spurious and low. A meta-analysis of those surveys does not raise it. Paper count does not raise it. Perron 2012 writes causal; that language does not mint an RCT. The large Smith odds come from questions that already name the noise. Ask about sleep without naming the source and the road OR falls to 1.14. Railway without the prompt is consistent with a null. That is how neighborhood, windows, and who complains get into the answer. LIFE-Adult used the same named-source ISO items. Exposure is a 2012 map; the questionnaire is 2018 to 2021. People move. Secondary roads are in the road curve, so it is not the WHO road curve. Aircraft OR 19.66 has a wide interval and almost no one at high Lnight. Montreal is one city, one telephone survey, response 46.8 percent, oversampled near sources. LNight is a land-use regression from two-week samples, not a bedroom microphone. This page is outdoor transportation sound and self-reported sleep. It is not PM2.5, not indoor TV, and not a lab restriction protocol. This is not medical advice and not a recommendation to move, to close a window, or to treat a number.

Effect

odds_ratio = 2.52. Smith 2022: HSD per 10 dB Lnight, noise named. Road OR 2.52 (2.28-2.79); aircraft 2.18; rail 2.97. Unnamed questions: road 1.14. Design does not identify.

Nodes

Lifestyle & environmentNighttime transportation noiseLifestyle & environmentSleep duration and regularity

Named confounders

Cite this page

What Causes What. “Nighttime transportation noise → Sleep duration and regularity.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-noise-sleep (atlas updated 2026-09-02).

https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-noise-sleep

Papers