We aimed to examine sleep in shelter-analogue settings to determine the sleep and environmental conditions in evacuation shelters. A summer social/educational event was conducted in an elementary school, wherein children and their parents (n = 109) spent one night in the school gymnasium; a total of 15 children and 7 adults completed the study. Data were recording using wrist actigraphy and questionnaires, from two days before the event to two days after the event. During the night in the gymnasium, sleep initiation in the children was found to be significantly delayed, whereas adults did not show any significant change in actigraphic sleep parameters. Although 57% of adults complained of stiffness of the floor, only 7% of children had the same complaint. The nocturnal noise recorded at four locations in the gymnasium showed that the percentage of 1-min data epochs with a noise level >40 dB ranged from 53% to 74% during lights-out. The number of subjects that woke up during the night showed a similar pattern with the changes in the noise level. The changes in sleep might represent event-specific responses, such as to a noisy environment, and the different complaints between adults and children could be useful in shelter management.（災害時の避難所での睡眠実態に対する対照データとして、小学校の学校行事で行われた親子が体育館で宿泊した際の睡眠および環境データを取得した。体育館宿泊時には、特に児童の睡眠で入眠が顕著に遅延した。また騒音測定では、40dB以上の値が一晩の半分以上で認められ、騒音の大きさと起きている人数との間に関連が認められた。）
13(12), 1186; doi: 10.3390/ijerph13121186
Koh Mizuno, Kazue Okamoto-Mizuno, Motoko Tanabe, Katsuko Niwano
