SENSITIVITY AND SUITABILITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL NOISE MONITORING DEVICE: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Environmental noise pollution is increased with the increasing of transportation, industrialization, and urbanization. It significantly affecting human health and the environment, especially school children. This study aims in assessing the environmental noise and the suitability of noise instruments for noise monitoring. Noise data (dBA) was collected for three peak hours with the interval of 1-minute by using Class 1 and Class 2 Sound Level Meter (SLM). LAeq for C1 and C2 are 63.20 dBA and 59.00 dBA, respectively. t-Test of two samples assuming unequal variances shows of statistically significant different (p<0.05) among the Classes of SLM. The LAeq of C1 is higher than C2, thus the SLM-C1 is more suitable to be used for monitoring of noise level at the study area. High traffic noise (L10) was noted with the evaluated range of 60.60-76.00 dBA. The background noise (L90) is lower with the calculated values ranged from 50.51-64.44 dBA. The minimum and maximum values of noise level were evaluated with the results of (47.30-53.70 dBA) and (72.00-85.20 dBA), respectively. Noise level at this school area must be mitigated through the planting of suitable trees and enforcement on motor vehicles that passing the school area