Full volume

Children living under the flightpath of Heathrow airport might seem to have little in common with youngsters growing up on Scotland's remote north coast. But teachers at both ends of the country can testify to the distress that noise pollution causes young children.

Dee Strange, head of Beavers Community Primary School in Hounslow, near Heathrow, says, 'The planes come over every minute or two and the windows rattle. It is very unpleasant and I think particularly younger children really do suffer. They find it very frightening.' Some 700 miles north in Scotland, Durness is the nearest village to an RAF weapons-testing area. Military exercises are infrequent, but school head Graham Bruce agrees that they do have an impact on the community. He says, 'In June there was an exercise with enormous bombs going off, and seriously low flying - the kind where you can see the pilot and the expression on his face. It is something that children can get terribly upset about.' The UK Noise Association lobbies at local and national level to highlight these sorts of problems. They identify road traffic noise as a main culprit. It accounts for 66 per cent of the total noise generated outside the home in the UK, with 32 million people exposed to high levels (55-75 decibels). And statistics for the UK before 11 September show a 6 per cent annual growth in aircraft usage, with 310 million passengers predicted to be flying in 2015, compared with 129.6 million in 1995.