Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
It is well-known in Europe that transportation noise causes adverse health effects, including sleep loss, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and death. The World Health Organization’s European Office published a monograph on the burden of disease from noise, and the European Noise Directive lays out a government plan to deal with the problem. Studies in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries have consistently shown this, most often with a relationship between greater noise exposure and worse health outcomes.
At the 12th Congress of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise (ICBEN) meeting in Zürich in June–the world’s largest meeting on the health effects of noise–Swiss researchers presented the results of a study done in their country. The results are from an integrated research approach dubbed SiRENE (the acronym roughly translates to Short and Long Term Effects of Transportation Noise Exposure) looking at noise exposure, sleep patterns, clinical testing for sleep disorders and glucose metabolism, mathematical modeling of noise exposure for the Swiss population, and determination of noise-induced health risks for the Swiss population. The study is ongoing, but interim reports at ICBEN were consistent with reports from other countries: transportation noise exposure caused cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and increased the risk of dying from a heart attack by 4% for each 10 decibel increase in road noise at home.
We are certain transportation noise has the same adverse health effects on Americans even if the research here is limited. Perhaps the best-known American study of the effect of transportation noise on health was done by Correia et al, looking at hospital admissions in the Medicare population in people living near airports. That study was limited in its scope and methods, but not surprisingly, transportation noise exposure increased hospital admissions here, too.
