11th International Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem (ICBEN) 2014, Nara, JAPAN The impact of railway freight with regard to vibration level, noise and number of trains on sleep Kerstin Persson Waye, Michael Smith, Oscar Hammar, Mikael Ögren, Ilona Croy Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Kerstin.persson.waye@amm.gu.se; Michael.smith@amm.gu.se; Oscar.hammar@amm.gu.se, Mikael.ogren@amm.gu.se, Ilona.Croy@amm.gu.se ABSTRACT As part of the European CargoVibes project, the impact of vibration and noise from rail freight traffic on sleep was investigated experimentally. In three studies, 59 test persons aged 19-30 years (mean 23.1) were exposed to various conditions: train passages with: noise only (N) (49.8 dBA Fmax ), vibration only (V) and noise and vibrations (NV) with maximum weighted (W d ) vibration levels of: 0.0058m/s 2 , (Low), 0.0102 m/s 2 (Moderate) and 0.0204m/s 2 (High) and 20, 36 or 52 passages during a night. Sensitivity to noise and gender was balanced within the design. Subjective ratings were collected in the morning and evening using questionnaires. Physiological reactions of sleep were recorded polysomnographically and are reported elsewhere. Results show that participants were able to well differentiate between noise and vibration induced sleep disturbance. Sleep quality and in tendency also nocturnal restoration were negatively affected by vibration level when keeping the number of trains the same. Increasing the number of trains resulted in a tendency of reduced sleep quality. Vibration only was found to cause sleep disturbance. The data provide a first basis for dose response relationships. Environmental vibration is concluded to be of importance for sleep at levels encountered in the field for people living in the vicinity of freight railway lines and as such should be considered when assessing the health consequences of freight trains. Keywords: Vibration, Sleep disturbance, dose response INTRODUCTION As pointed out in the White paper for European transport the rail transportation is aiming to increase its market share of goods transportation from 8 % in 2001 to 15 % in 2020 (EC 2001). To facilitate this within the existing railway schedules, most of this transportation will be done during night time slots. Noise and vibration will potentially increase, with annoyance and sleep disturbance as critical hindrance for this development. While quite many studies have evaluated the impact of noise from railway on annoyance and sleep e.g (Knall and Schuemer 1983, Aasvang et al. 2008, Pennig et al. 2012); and more specifically for sleep disturbance (Basner et al. 2011, Elmenhorst et al. 2012) (Griefahn et al. 2006, Saremi et al. 2008, Hong et al. 2010, Aasvang et al. 2011) (Lercher et al. 2010)very little guidance can be given to human response due to vibration from rail transportation. To our knowledge only three previous projects have evaluated the impact on sleep with reference to rail vibration (Ohrstrom 1997, Klaeboe et al. 2003, Öhrström E 2009) Öhrström and collegues report on