Xetal › About Xetal › Reducing Noise Pollution

The results of noise pollution vary from mild irritation to severe stress and have a detrimental effect on peoples' health and quality of life.

This problem is particularly acute where there are shared homes and in apartment blocks where the scale of noise has increased dramatically in recent years to become one of the 20th century's biggest environmental and building problems. Now the government is encouraging developers to build at higher densities the issue is even more important.

To combat these problems of noise pollution the government has introduced new legislation. The new standards have been published in a new Approved Document-Part E (England and Wales) of the Building Regulations "Resistance to the Passage of Sound", which came into effect on July 1st 2003 for refurbishment and July 1st 2004 for new build.

The government is tackling the problem by introducing more robust building standards to improve the soundproofing in new homes and schools for both new and refurbishment projects in England and Wales.

The aims of the part E legislation are:

• To improve acoustics and therefore sound privacy between residential buildings.
• To improve the sound reduction of internal walls and floors within the home.
• To improve the sound reduction between rooms and in common areas in hostels, hotels, residential homes, schools and hospitals etc.
• To re-address sound performance criteria, taking into account da-to-day low frequency sounds such as TV, Stereo etc, TV was considered to be the main cause for complaint in the majority of the 180000 complaints about noise per year received by the Local Authorities in the UK.

Aside from regulations there is a rise in the expected standard of living by the whole population as people are no longer prepared to tolerate "noisy neighbour" syndrome.