The bar charts compare the proportion of European residents affected by noise during the day and at night across cities and rural areas in 2007.
Overall, it is apparent that urban citizens were more likely to be affected by noise than those living in rural areas. In addition, a higher percentage of people were impacted by noise during the day than at night, and traffic noise accounted for the largest share compared with other sources.
Regarding cities in Europe, 64 million residents were affected by traffic noise during the day, whereas only 48 million were disturbed at night. These figures were considerably higher than those for other types of noise pollution. In particular, only 10 million citizens were affected by trains during the day, six times fewer than the figure for traffic. At night, trains disturbed about 8 million residents, representing roughly one-sixth of the traffic total. Other noise sources had much smaller impacts, with only around 4 million people affected in total, especially industry, which accounted for just 0.25 to 1 million individuals.
Turning to rural areas, the number of individuals affected by noise pollution declined sharply. However, traffic remained the most serious source of disturbance, affecting 34 million people during the day and 24 million at night. For other types of noise, the overall figures fell by two- to threefold. Similar to cities, trains were the second-largest source of noise pollution, affecting 8 million people by day and 6 million at night, which were relatively small figures. Regarding aircraft noise, as rural areas lacked extensive infrastructure, the number of people affected during the day was roughly half that of city dwellers, while the figures were comparable at night. Finally, industrial noise had virtually no impact on rural populations.