39.4 Regulation

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Noise regulation is executed by local governments once the central government enacts a noise

regulation law. The law is considered the “national minimum.” For example, factory noise,

construction work noise, and road traffic noise are under the purview of the Noise Control Act, which

means the central government is responsible of regulating these kinds of noise. On the other hand,

community noise and factory noise are under the purview of the original regulation of local

governments. It can be said that local governments are responsible for a great part of the noise policy,

although they may not always fully understand the situations concerned. In what follows, an outline of

the legal system for environmental noise problem in Japan is given as an example of a typical legal

system for noise regulation [6].

In Japan, the “Environmental Quality Standards for Noise” was revised in 1999 after 27 years with the

old law. Figure 39.2 outlines of the legal system in Japan.

Basic Environment Law (1968, revised in 1993)

Environmental Quality Standards for Noise

(1971, revised in 1998)

Environmental Quality Standards for Aircraft Noise

(1973)

Environmental Quality Standards for Shinkansen

Super-express Railway Noise (1975)

General and roadside areas

Areas around large-scale airport (including airbases)

Areas along Shinkansen Super-express Railways

Noise Regulation Law (1968, amended in 1999)

Environmental Impact Assessment Law (1997)

Guideline for the Preservation of Living Environment around

Small Airfields (1990)

Guideline of Noise Measures for Conventional Railways (1995)

FIGURE 39.2 Legal system for environmental noise in Japan. (Source: Tachibana, H. and Kaku, J. 2003. Acoustic

measures for the environmental noise assessment in Japan, pp. 3317 – 3322. In Proceedings of Inter-noise 2003

(N1007). With permission.)

39-4 Vibration and Shock Handbook

© 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Each of these laws and standards is legislated for a specific noise problem (a noise source), and

therefore different noise indices are specified according to the respective noise problems. To review

this situation from a historical viewpoint, it can be said that each law or standard responds to a

specific noise problem promptly, through the use of available measurement technology at that time.

However, some laws and standards have become outdated since their establishment, when

considering the current situation, international dynamics, and the current acoustic measurement

technology.

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