Noise and air pollution – the real community impacts of airport expansion
19th December, 2025
In November 2025, AEF held its 50th anniversary AGM featuring guest presentations from Professor Anna Hansell from the University of Leicester, and Dr Gary Fuller from Imperial College London, both world experts in air pollution, noise and public health. Here are some of the highlights.
What is noise pollution and how does is effect our health?
In recent years, ongoing work by the academic and medical community has revealed the true health impacts of exposure to excessive environmental noise. Far from being a problem only for easily-dismissed “noise sensitive” people, an increasing body of academic research is showing that noise impacts all of us, whether we realise it or not.
Aircraft noise is no different, and Professor Hansell gave us an insider view into the latest academic thinking. Updating a study initially completed in 2015, Prof Hansell’s latest research shows an increased risk of heart disease hospitalisations near Heathrow, and other airports such as Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham. Research has also shown changes to artery and heart structures as well as an elevated risk of developing hypertension with higher levels of exposure to noise over a 24-hour period, or at night. Professor Hansell explained that a particular concern is exposure to aircraft noise at night. Night-time noise events at airports are associated with disrupted sleep cycles and the study outlined this has potential for important impacts on health. Her research has also shown that the standard noise metrics don’t fully capture the characteristics of noise exposure. Average noise levels near Heathrow Airport were above WHO guidelines with average nightly levels from 11pm to 7am of 44.2 Lnight (WHO guidelines are 40 dB Lnight) and the highest noise levels were in the early morning shoulder period from 06:00-07:00h.
Professor Hansell’s slides from the presentation
How do airports contribute to air pollution?
Aircraft release a cocktail of air pollutants, including NOx, sulphur, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter (soot and black carbon). Discussion about air pollution from airports has historically focused on nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution from increased road transport due to people driving to and from the airport. There has been some focus on NO2 emissions from aircraft during landing and take-off phases, but relatively little investigation into the role that plays in localised ozone formation at ground level, or indeed in the troposphere where it is known to be a climate forcer.
A growing body of evidence has also started to emerge about the potential harms from ultrafine particles, a fraction of the size of PM2.5 particles which are known to impact human health. Aircraft are big emitters of UFPs, due to the fact that kerosene is not treated to remove the sulphur (unlike diesel and petrol). Dr Fuller, Associate Professor in Air Quality Measuring at Imperial College London, talked about the lack of monitoring of UFPs around airports. He led a study with a group of researchers, which found high levels of UFP just 500m from the Gatwick airport fence in rural Sussex – the levels discovered there were greater than those found 0.5m from London’s Marylebone Road. Another study around Amsterdam’s Schipol airport found high levels of UFPs at least 40kms from the airport, associated with the prevailing wind direction, as well as a study at LAX airport in LA which showed high concentrations of UFPs under the approaching flight paths.
The World Health Organisation has yet to make a recommendation on the “safe” level of exposure to UFPs, partly because of the variability in size of different UFPs and technical differences between monitoring studies. However, the WHO recommends more action on tackling UFPs, and there is growing evidence of an association between UFPs, lung inflammation, foetal growth and blood pressure and heart problems.
Dr Fuller’s slides from the presentation
More about the speakers:
Professor Anna Hansell is Chair of the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, has over twenty years research experience in environmental epidemiology with a long-standing interest in environmental impacts on human health, focussing on long-term and lifetime effects of air pollution from pregnancy to old age on respiratory disease.
Dr Gary Fuller is one of three UKRI Clean Air Champions working to provide leadership and coordination across the Clean Air Programme and within the wider research and stakeholder community. He is an air pollution scientist at Imperial College London, specialising in atmospheric and health science, and is known for his work on the London Air Quality Network. He also regularly contributes articles The Guardian.