Whether you're stuck
in it or breathing in the fumes, traffic is bad for your health and now, a new
study finds that rumbling lorries, honking horns and screeching tyres can put
you at heart attack risk.
The study by Andreas
Seidler and co-authors evaluated information from statutory health insurers on
over a million Germans over the age of 40 and found that the increase in risk,
though slight, is greatest with road and rail traffic noise, less with aircraft
noise.
In this case-control
study of secondary data, the addresses of persons living in the Rhine-Main
region were matched precisely to road, rail, and traffic noise exposure
measurements for 2005.
When the analysis was
restricted to patients who died of heart attack up to 2014/2015, a
statistically significant association was found between noise exposure and the
risk of heart attack.
The authors believe
the lower risk from aircraft noise can be explained
by the fact that, unlike road and rail traffic noise, aircraft noise never
remains continuously above 65 dB. They also see indications from their analysis
that exposure to traffic noise influences not just the genesis, but the course
of a heart attack.
Although strictly
speaking these results show only an association between traffic noise and heart attack,
the authors believe that the sheer numbers of people affected by noise
pollution mean that it is now right to start intensive efforts towards
effective prevention of traffic noise.
This original article
is published in the Deutsches Arzteblatt International.
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