International Science and Technology Journal

In the last decade, electricity became a critical problem in the city of Tripoli as well as other cities in Libya. This shortage in power led to the increasing use of power generators at homes, which generated negative impacts such as air contamination and noise pollution, particularly in residential areas. Since Libya have no standards or policy to protect public health and wellbeing of the public form noise pollution the study adopt the World Health Organization (W.H.O) regulation and the Egyptian standard of the maximum permissible limit for noise intensity in different land use area. This paper addresses the environmental noise pollution and investigates the impact of the private power generators use in a residential district in Tripoli - Libya. The study focuses on monitoring the sound level in a neighborhood to assess the soundscape quality. The study adopted two methodologies for data collection, sound walks, and interviews. In the sound walk, participants were asked to answer questionnaire while monitoring the sound level in (dB-A) in six locations along the street during the day. A second group of participants were asked in their homes to tune into the surrounding to indicate their level of annoyance using the five level of Likert scale. The measurement of noise level was taken during day and night for three normal days and three days during the power outage. The study concludes that social survey analysis indicates the awareness level of such noise pollution and its impact on the built environment requires broader attention. Moreover, the monitoring results show the noise level externally is much intolerable. In addition, the study determines that the relevant authorities need to establish regulation and policy to protect public health and wellbeing of the public from noise pollution and set a recommended noise limit according to Land use. Key words: electricity, power generators, noise pollution, Tripoli – Libya.