Sleep effects of aircraft noise near Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport: results from the pilot study of the DEBATS research program.

DEBATS is an on-going research program aiming to characterize the relations between aircraft noise exposure and health status of French residents around airports. In particular, it includes a sleep study whose objective is to characterize specifically acute effects of aircraft noise on sleep quality using precise noise exposure measurements. A pilot study was performed in 2011 in order to test and validate the protocol. Twelve individuals have worn an actiwatch for seven nights and have completed a sleep diary in order to evaluate their sleep quality. An actiwatch detects wrist movement and is useful for discriminating sleep from wake activity. Then, the actimetric measurements make it possible to derive sleep indicators. Simultaneously, a sonometer located in the participants’ bedroom has recorded their noise exposure during these nights. A second sonometer set up outside (at the bedroom façade) has allowed us to identify aircraft noise and to evaluate acoustic impact of this noise in the participants’ bedroom. Thus, energetic as well as event acoustic indicators have been estimated and a link between these indicators and sleep quality has been investigated. The results of this pilot study will be presented and discussed