On the occasion of the International Noise Awareness Day, which is marked on Wednesday, the association says in a statement that a National Strategy for Environmental Noise (ENRA), promised four years ago, is urgently needed.

The Government's proposal for the State Budget for 2022 (disclosed on 12 October 2021) stipulated that the ENRA would already be in operation that year. So far, there is no such strategy.

In the statement, Zero stresses that controlling noise pollution is the State's responsibility, and that citizens exposed to "unhealthy noise levels" cannot be the only ones to pay, with health degradation and in some cases premature death, "the costs of wrong decisions".

Zero argues that the polluter-pays principle, already in the legislation, should be applied to noise pollution. And it says that noise taxes are already applied in some European countries, considering that the law should start to provide for these taxes, for example for large transport infrastructures.

Citing the European Environment Agency, Zero recalls that in Europe at least one in five people is chronically exposed to noise levels that can cause adverse health effects.

"In the European Union, it is estimated that at least 18 million people are highly annoyed and five million highly disturbed in their sleep due to prolonged exposure to noise caused by the transport sector, and it is estimated that this phenomenon causes around 11 thousand premature deaths and 40,000 new cases of ischemic heart disease per year", recalls Zero.

Zero also explains that in Portugal the regulation of environmental noise is defined in the General Noise Regulation, and that noise control is complemented by the provisions of the Environmental Noise Assessment and Management System.

The General Noise Regulation determines the obligation for municipalities to draw up Municipal Noise Maps and Municipal Noise Reduction Plans. But on the mainland, according to data from the Portuguese Environment Agency, only half of the municipalities (143 out of 278) have Municipal Noise Maps, and only 2.2% (six) have Municipal Noise Reduction Plans.

"Zero calls for a review of the penalties foreseen for non-compliance with the maps and plans provided for in the regulation, in order to encourage their implementation", says the association in the statement.

In Portugal, it adds, there are few studies on the economic costs of noise, one of them from 2019, on the impacts on human health of night flights in Lisbon and Loures, which found that the costs amounted to 206 million euros.

In October last year, Zero launched a "Damage Counter" (at www.zero.org) on the economic and health costs related to noise from Humberto Delgado airport, in Lisbon, Loures and Almada. Since 2015, the accumulated costs have already exceeded 9.4 billion euros.

The International Noise Awareness Day was created to raise awareness of the public health problem that noise can constitute. After air pollution, noise pollution is the environmental factor that has the greatest impact on people's health and lives in the short, medium and long term.

The effects of prolonged exposure to noise in general cause discomfort, sleep disturbances, negative effects on the cardiovascular and metabolic systems, as well as learning difficulties in children. In addition, it has direct economic impacts on productivity at work and on the value of assets.

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