Noise pollution exposures continue to pose a serious public health threat in a built environment especially as businesses, infrastructural developments continue to grow in response to ever increasing global population (Goines and Hagler, 2007; To et al., 2015; Yuan et al., 2019). While, noise levels were recognized as a common environmental hazard to people living closer to airports, road-ways, harbors, wind farms, and industrial areas (Münzel et al., 2018), there has also been a growing concern about its impacts on health care microenvironments (Montes-González et al., 2019). Short-term noise exposure was found as a contributor to physiological problems (vascular and cerebral dysfunctions), mental stress (Daiber et al., 2020), metabolic syndrome (Huang et al., 2020), annoyance, and sleep disturbance (Park et al., 2015). These health effects may exacerbate especially in indoor commercial areas and workplaces as most people spend about 90% of their time in these environments with continuous noise exposures (Amoatey et al., 2018; Monteiro et al., 2018). Thus, prolonged exposure to noise could cause hearing loss, increase the incidence of heart diseases, diabetes, dimentia including causing obesity among both children and adult populations (Andersson et al., 2018; Brookhouser et al., 1992; Christensen et al., 2015; Pyko et al., 2015; Sułkowski, 2009). Since noise pollution is considered as everyday environmental problem, it is imperative to adopt intervention measures to reduce these exposures to help minimize the associated adverse health effects and discomforts. Several mitigation approaches have been developed, these include the use of acoustic plasters (Magrini and Lisot, 2015), installation of transducers (Sohrabi et al., 2020), others have also proposed reduction of airflow in naturally ventilated buildings (Oldham et al., 2004) and use of porous sound absorbers (Cobo and Simón, 2019). In addition, since outdoor noise pollution from road traffic, aircraft and industries are also major contributors to indoor noise levels, it is therefore important to tackle these sources as well. Here, increasing urban greenery, use of noise of barriers made with sustainable materials, and sustainable urban traffic planning, and pavement designs have been identified as effective mitigation measures (Ferrini et al., 2020; Licitra and Vogiatzis, 2019).
Health facilities such as hospitals are one of the most noise-sensitive areas in urban environment since it accommodates several patients including those with underlying health conditions such as cardiovascular, metabolic, and respiratory chronic diseases. This has led to the introduction of very stringent noise limits of 30 and 45 dBA by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), respectively to help control noise levels in indoor hospital environments (Montes-González et al., 2019). An investigation conducted in an intensive care unit (ICU) rooms in Saudi Arabia revealed a slight increase in 12-hour average noise levels during the morning ( 64.1 dBA) compared to the night (62.48 dBA), these levels far exceeded both the WHO hospital limits and outdoor levels of 55 dBA (Alduais and Salama, 2019). It has also been found that more than 45 years noise exposure assessment data gathered across various hospitals in the United States have shown consistent increasing noise pollution levels including Johns Hopkins Hospital (average of 50–60 dBA)(Busch-Vishniac et al., 2005). Interestingly, an investigation was carried out to evaluate sleep disturbances caused by the noise produced in hospital indoor environments using home settings as control among both adults and children. The study reported low sleep quality in pediatric rooms (77.1%) compared to homes (88.9%) with measured median noise levels of 48.6 and 34.7 dBA, respectively (Bevan et al., 2019). It is known that the degree of noise levels could be influenced by spatio-temporal, socio-cultural and lifestyle variabilities among populations (Gjestland, 2007; Minoura et al., 2015).
In the case of Oman, there is limited knowledge about noise exposures and their annoyance levels in hospital environments. This study was conducted at a Government Teaching Hospital (GTH), one of the major government hospitals in Oman with more than 3000 staff. The main objective of this present study is to assess the noise levels, reported annoyance, and health effects on populations dwelling in various wards and emergency rooms in GTH in Oman. This was achieved by using a mixed approach of field measurement, social survey via questionnaires, and quantitative risk approaches. Also, the observed noise levels is compared with both local and international standards, and recommendations were made based on hospital management and urban planning point of view.