FIELD-STUDY OF SLEEP DISTURBANCE - EFFECTS OF AIRCRAFT NOISE AND OTHER FACTORS ON 5,742 NIGHTS OF ACTIMETRICALLY MONITORED SLEEP IN A LARGESUBJECT SAMPLE

This field study assessed the effects of nighttime aircraft noise on a ctimetrically measured sleep in 400 people (211 women and 189 men; 20- 70 years of age; one per household) habitually living at eight sites a djacent to four U.K. airports, with different levels of night flying. Subjects wore wrist-actimeters for 15 nights and completed morning sle ep logs. A sample of 178 nights of sleep electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded synchronously with actigrams. The EEG was used to develo p filters for the raw actigrams, in order to: (1) estimate sleep onset and (2) compare actigrams with aircraft noise events (ANEs). Actigram s, filtered to detect the onset of discrete movements, were able to de tect 88% of all EEG-determined periods of interim wakefulness of > 15 seconds and periods of movement time of >10 seconds. The main findings were: (1) actimetry and self-reports showed that only a minority of A NEs affected sleep, and, for most of our subjects, that domestic and i diosyncratic factors had much greater effects; (2) despite large betwe en-site variations in ANEs, the difference between sites in overall sl eep disturbance was not significant; (3) there was a diminished actime tric response to ANEs in the first hour of sleep and, apparently, also in the last hour of sleep; and (4) men had significantly more discret e movements than women and were more likely to respond to ANEs.