Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Does Exposure to Noise near Airports Cause Heart Attacks?

Residential exposure to aircraft noise and hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases: multi-airport retrospective study (11 page pdf, Andrew W Correia, Junenette L Peters,Jonathan I Levy,Steven Melly, Francesca Dominici, the BMJ, Oct. 8, 2013)

Today we review research into the risk of heart disease for seniors over 65 living near each of 89 airports across the USA and exposed to noise above 45 db. Results indicate that there is a significantly higher rate of hospitalization from exposure to the higher level of airport noise (above 55 db) airport noise  

Key Quotes:

“Noise has been associated with hypertension, myocardial infarction, and ischemic heart disease”

“few studies of the relation between aircraft noise and cardiovascular disease have been conducted to date…in this study.. evaluate the association between airport related noise and the risk of hospital admission for cardiovascular disease in the population aged 65 years or more residing near airports in the contiguous states”

“we found no evidence of an increase in the cardiovascular disease hospitalization rate when noise increases from low(less than 45 db) to medium , but statistically significant evidence of an increase in the cardiovascular disease hospitalization rate when noise increases from medium to high(55db).”

 “although an exposure-response relation exists between noise and cardiovascular admission rates, there may also be a threshold for the effect of noise exposure on cardiovascular disease hospitalizations. Results from our models using a categorized exposure variable showed consistent statistically significant associations in only the highest exposure group (>55 dB).”

 “air pollution is less correlated with aircraft noise than it is with road traffic noise

 “we found that aircraft noise, particularly characterized by the 90th centile of noise exposure among census blocks within zip codes, is statistically significantly associated with higher relative rate of hospitalization for cardiovascular disease among older people residing near airports”

“Long term exposure to aircraft noise is positively associated with hospitalization for cardiovascular disease”

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