A questionnaire study was carried out to investigate disturbances of daily life and health effects due to noise and vibration from Shinkansen railway in Amagasaki, Japan. The data from 171 respondents showed that serious sleep disturbance and speech interference were caused by the noise and vibration. Furthermore, adverse effects on subjective health identified by GHQ28 were found. The effects existed especially in the noise-sensitive group, while no significant relationship was found in the insensitive group. The primary cause of the adverse effect on mental health was examined, and the result showed that the mental health mainly deteriorated with sleep disturbance. The relationships among mental health effect, noise sensitivity and sleep disturbance were also investigated. It was found that the sensitive group was easily affected by sleep disturbance and showed higher risk of GHQ case than the insensitive group.
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