Comparison of Noise Levels, Legal Framework and Environmental Noise Management in Lima and Callao with Regard to other Latin-American Cities

Abstract

Given the unbalanced urban development, the rapid economic growth and the various migrations toward the capital, Metropolitan Lima has become in a chaotic center where noise surpass the recommended exposure levels given from the WHO. Because of that, it has been decided to analyze noise in the capital in order to compare the results with other countries and to study the law that regulates noise pollution and finally to discover the reasons why noise is a problem to be solved. The comparison between Lima, Bogotá and Santiago concludes that noise levels in Santiago are lower and better controlled than Lima and Bogotá, while these ones share almost the same reality in terms of noise levels. Talking about legal framework, each country has an appropriate normative system, but in the case of Perú the legal framework began at least 10 years late because Chile and Colombia had started at the nineties. Furthermore, Chile keeps one step ahead due to its environmental noise management plan in which exposes mitigation solutions. According to all of these factors, make sense that Chilean society is in the state of the art in terms of managing noise pollution than ours and its reality is more alike to a country with high expertise in acoustics in the world.
Following this model, it is important that our authorities think clearly about noise pollution and take as a kick-off the analyze in this study to improve the environmental noise management in Lima and Peru.