TO STUDY THE TRAFFIC NOISE LEVEL IN YOUR TOWN USING SOUND PRESSURE LEVEL (SPL)

METER.

This report is submitted for the partial fulfilment requirements for the Secondary Level Education of
National Examination Board (NEB)

SUBMITTED BY

PRATIKSHYA PAUDEL

Isc. First year [XI]

GAMMA

Roll.no=25

Sai Global College,

Siddharthanagar-8,Rupandehi

Date: Baisakh, 2081

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 RECOMMENDATION
It is certified that Mrs, Pratikshya Paudel has carried out the project work entitled TO
MEASURE TRAFFIC NOISE USING SPL METER under my supervision. I recommend the
project in the partial fulfilment for the requirement of degree of grade 11 in Physics.

Signature:.................................
Name: Rajendra Raut
Supervisor
Designation of supervisor: .....................................
Date: Baisakh, 2081

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 STUDENT'S DECLARATION
It hereby declares that the project work entitled status of TESTING TRAFFIC NOISE BY SPL
METHOD is submitted to the NEB is an original piece of work. Under the supervision of
Mr. Rajendra Raut faculty member of Sai Global Academy and is submitted in partial
fulfilment of the requirements for the award of degree of Grade 11, Physics. This project
work has not been submitted to any other institution for the award of any degree till the
date.

Signature: ..............................
Name of Student: Pratikshya Paudel
Roll no.: 25
Date:Baisakh,2081

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Mr. Rajendra Raut for his admirable
cooperation, inspirable guidance, caring, continuous support and valuable suggestion throughout the
project work.

Furthermore, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all my teachers, college staff who directly
or indirectly helped me in the competition of the study and skill development.

Specially. I would like to express my gratitude to the Head of Department Mr. Sailendra Tripathi sir for
all the support and homely environment throughout the work.

Additionally, I would like to thanks to all my family members for their unconditional support. Lastly, I
would like to thanks all the respondents, who provide me the accurate first hand data for my research
work.

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 EVALUATION

We certify that we have evaluate this project work entitled TESTING SOUND POLLUTION
submitted by Mrs. Pratikshya Paudel and in our opinion, it fulfills all the specified criteria
in the scope and quality as project work for the partial fulfillment for the requirement of
the degree of grade 11 in Physics at NEB, Sanothimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal.

EVALUATION COMMITTEE

...................................... .................................
Rajendra Raut Silendra Tripathi
Supervisor HOD
Sai Global Academy Sai Global Academy

Date: ............................................

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. COVER PAGE.......................................................................................... 1
2. RECOMMENTATION.............................................................................. 2
3. STUDENT'S DECLARATION..................................................................... 3
4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT........................................................................... 4
5. EVALUATION.......................................................................................... 5
6. TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................................. 6
7. ABSTRACT & INTRODUCTIOIN............................................................... 7
8. EFFECTS OF NOISE................................................................................. 8
9. SOUND PRESSURE LEVEL (SPL) METER.................................................. 9
10. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.................................................................... 10
11. CONCLUSION....................................................................................... 11
12. REFERENCE........................................................................................... 12

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 ABSTRACT
Traffic noise is considered as one of the important of noise pollution than adversely affects human
health in residential urban areas Noise pollution is an interfering air-pollutant which has both auditory
and a host of non-auditory effects on the exposed population. The surrounding are effected by noise
coming from different sources like traffic noise and the noise coming from vehicles create the problems
for surrounding area. Noise produces by vehicles affect the life of surrounding area such as disturbing
sleep, difficulties in conversation and reducing the effort on outdoor activities and many more. Since
level lie much above the study suggests control measures to be instituted on a priority.

INTRODUCTION
The addition of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change is known as
pollution. Mainly pollution is caused by things which are useful for mankind. One of the major problems
of the present world is pollution. The rapid growth of urbanization and industrialization is responsible
for noise pollution. It is increasing rapidly with the increase in vehicles.
Traffic noise is further divided into vehicular traffic noise, railway noise and aircraft noise. All
the vehicles in roads are the sources of vehicular noise.

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 EFFECTS OF NOISE
Sound helps us to communicate with each other. It also helps us to reduce everyday
headache problem by listening natural sounds. However, irrelevant, excessive sound
becomes noise. Noise is responsible for any temporary or long-term effect on the
physical, psychological. Hearing impairment, lack of concentration, irritation, etc,. are
some effects of noise.

NOISE CRITERIA
According to WHO criteria for safe noise level for a city is 45 dB. The threshold limit for noise by the
National Standard for Noise.
THRESHOLD LIMIT FOR NOISE LEVEL (IN db)
S.N. THRESHOLD LIMIT FOR NOISE LEVEL IN dB

1 Whisper 20 dB
2 Quiet Library 40 dB
3 Conversation 60 dB
4 Loud music 80 dB

Sound level is usually measured in decibels and is measured with respect to the change in air pressure.
The louder sound means larger air pressure changing from atmospheric pressure to another level.
Sound pressures are measured in pascals. The smallest sound pressure that human can hear is 20 micro
pascals or 2×10-5 Pa. So, the sound pressure can be calculated by using this relation.
SPL = 20 log10 (P/Pref)dB
Where, P is the sound pressure we are measuring, and p ref is our reference, the pressure of the smallest
sound we can hear, 2.0 × 10-5 Pa.

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 SOUND PRESSURE LEVEL (SPL) METER
A SPL meter typically displays a range of sound pressure levels from 20 dB to 140 dB, although it is
possible to measure lower of higher than this range. Many can also measure long periods of time or at
set intervals. Using a mobile SPL meter enables memory and then download the measurements later for
analysis, reporting and to identify appropriate control measures to be put in place to reduce noise.

OBJECTIVE
The main objective of the study was to measure the environmental noise levels and assess
the noise pollution in the Bhairahawa predominantly due to traffic mobility.

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 MATERIALS AND METHOD
Bhairahawa is the most important municipal city, situated in Lumbini province. The noise levels were
measured with the help of a portable precision digital sound level meter. This instrument is primarily
designed for community noise surveys. A large digital display gives a single value indication of the
maximum weighted RMS sound pressure level measured during previous second.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The traffic noise measured at the spots along highway areas. The maximum and minimum
noise levels observed at the highway are respectively. The source is
predominantly attributable to motor vehicular traffic. The permissible level for road traffic
noise is 70 dB. However, it should be noted that exceedance was during the day time.

TRAFFIC NOISE IN BHAIRAHAWA ALONG THE MAIN ROAD

S.N. Location Time Sound pressure level, dB
Min Max
1 Buddha Chowk 04:27 85 96
2 Devkota Chowk 05:00 89 100
3 Bus Park 05:25 76 80
4 Milan Chowk 05:45 77 84
5 Prabhat Path 06:00 65 75

The environmental noise levels directly emanating from the given location was measured to have an
idea of the main source of the main source of noise to the entire surrounding of given location.
Therefore during the day hours heavy human as well as many vehicles arrive and go from these places.
There are so many commercial shops also located in these areas who are chronically exposed to the
noise levels.

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 CONCLUSION
This project aimed to study the environmental noise pollution in the Bhairahawa due to traffic noise,
due to heavy traffic of vehicles, very high environmental noise level is present in city, this should be the
cause of so many health problems that the people exposed to this environment facing these days.
Planting trees on both sides of road, discouragement of high sound pollution vehicles, replacement of
old vehicles, public awareness would be fruitful for minimizing the level of traffic noise level in
Bhairahawa as well as other cities.

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 REFERENCE
 M.L. Davis and D.A. Cornell, Introduction to Environmental Engineering (5th edition), McGraw-Hill
Inc., New York (2013).
 E. Murphy and E.A. King, Environmental noise pollution: Noise mapping, Public Health, Policy,
Elsevier, USA (2014).
 B. Berglund, T,"Lindvall, D.H. Schwela and World Health Organization, Guidelines for community
noise.
 http://rajpatra.dop.gov.np/welcome/book/?ref=2180 (Accessed on september,2021).
 S. Rahmani, S.M. Mousavi and M.J. Kamali, modelling of road traffic noise with the use of genetic
algorithm, Applied Soft Computing 11, 1008-1013 (2011).
 S.K. Joshi, S. Devkota, S. Chamling and S. Shrestha, Environmental noise induced hearing loss in
Nepal, Kathmandu University Medical Journal 1(3), 177-183 (2003).

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