Photo credit: Thirdman
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
Prevention reports on a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology linking road traffic noise exposure to high blood pressure. The association of noise exposure to hypertension is not a new finding, having been reported in numerous other studies over the past several years. The biological mechanisms by which this happens are well-known, down to the molecular and genetic levels. These are involuntary biological responses to noise, which activates three stress response systems, the autonomic nervous system, the hormonal stress response system, and inflammation of the vascular lining.
Most experts in the field think that the evidence is so strong, from multiple studies with biological mechanisms confirmed by laboratory research, that causality is established. This conclusion isn’t new. As pioneering noise researcher Wolfgang Babisch wrote in 2014:
The question is no longer whether noise causes cardiovascular diseases; it is rather to what extent. This has to do with the slope of the exposure-response relationship and the empirical onset of the risk increase (intercept of the exposure response curve). Risk assessment and risk management relies on established exposure-response relationships.
For any doubters reading The Quiet Coalition’s posts, please be aware of the Bradford Hill criteria used in epidemiology to establish causality in complex epidemiological analyses. There can be no rational doubt that exposure to road traffic noise, and other sources of environmental noise pollution, causes hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and increased mortality in those exposed to it.
Reducing road traffic noise is actually quite easy: ban noisy exhausts, require quieter tire compounds and road surfaces, plant trees and dense vegetation on streetscapes and next to highways, use sound barriers when necessary, switch to electric vehicles, ban horn use except in emergency situations.
But as our colleague Arline Bronzaft PhD has written, “We have the way to reduce noise. All we need is the will.”
A quieter world will be a better and healthier world for all.
