Results from implementation of the new Portuguese environmental noise regulation

Abstract

Environmental noise is one of the main environmental problems in Portugal. In order to minimise it, new Portuguese environmental noise legislation was recently approved. In this study it was pretended to analyse and compare results of several environments noise evaluations according to the old and new legislation criteria. Although the new criteria appear to be more restrictive, the evaluation parameters have changed. It is therefore not quite clear that new legislation is in fact more restrictive. Analysis from 15 different cases shows that there are significant differences between the two criteria.