Industrial and military operations that generate blast noise require operational management and control measures to manage and reduce adverse impacts. There are two main technical areas of interest: occupational exposure and environmental noise. In this paper, we consider the latter through a brief overview of the relevant scientific literature and decades of field work in the UK. Prediction, assessment, and subsequent control of environmental blast noise require detailed knowledge and understanding of the noise source, propagation path, and receiver. However, highly transient blast noise sources are often poorly characterised, accurate prediction of the propagation path requires vast quantities of difficult to obtain spatial and temporal meteorological data, and the receiver is often a diverse set of communities. Here we show that managing environmental impacts from blast noise sources is best achieved through a combination of control measures to reduce noise from the source, fast and efficient regression-based noise predictions augmented by a continuous online monitoring system, and by maintaining community engagement. The implication of this work is that environmental impacts from blast noise sources are best managed through the implementation of formal procedures and best practices on-site.