The bar charts give information about the prevalence of four different types of noise affecting populations in Europe during daytime and nighttime hours in cities and rural areas in 2007.
Overall, traffic noise affected by far the largest number of people in both cities and rural areas, while industrial noise had the least impact. In addition, the figures during the day were consistently higher than nighttime figures, and urban areas recorded significantly higher figures than rural areas.
Looking at the chart in more detail, 64 million urban residents were exposed to traffic noise during the day, which was 30 million higher than the figure in rural areas, while at night, this noise disturbed 48 and 24 million individuals in cities and rural areas respectively. 10 million city dwellers were affected by train noise during daylight hours, with numbers slightly decreasing to 8 million at night. Comparatively, rural areas recorded 8 million affected by train noise during the day and 6 million at night.
Regarding the remaining sources, aircraft noise affected 4 million in cities by day, reducing to 1 million at night, while the figures in rural areas stood at 2 million and 1 million respectively. Lastly, industrial noise was minimal, affecting only 1 million city inhabitants during the day and 0.25 million at night, while rural areas recorded no individuals affected by this noise at any time.