By Jane Collingwood
An individual’s risk of heart attack may be increased by high levels of road traffic noise.
Researchers from Sweden have found this link among people living near Stockholm. Professor Goran Pershagen and colleagues at the Karolinska Institutet based their study on 1,571 heart attack patients and a similar number of healthy adults, whose level of traffic noise exposure over the previous 20 years was estimated.
When they excluded people with impaired hearing, they found a 40 per cent higher risk of heart attack among people exposed to road traffic noise above 50 decibels. The link remained when other established risk factors were taken into account.
Professor Pershagen commented: "More research will be needed to establish a definite correlation between road traffic noise and myocardial infarction [heart attack], but our results are supported by other studies showing the cardiovascular effects of noise, such as those concerning high blood pressure.
"Councils should already be taking these results into account when planning new roads and residential areas."
Full details of the study appear in the journal Epidemiology. The authors state that about 40 per cent of the European population is exposed to road traffic noise exceeding 55 decibels during the day. They believe noise pollution is a serious and growing problem.
Co-author Dr Jenny Selander said: "In the present study, some 65 per cent of subjects were exposed to road traffic noise at levels of 50 decibels or more.
"This percentage is probably lower for the country as a whole, given that the subjects all came from in and around Stockholm, but there is still a considerable proportion of the population who are being exposed to noise."
Selander, J. et al. Long-Term Exposure to Road Traffic Noise and Myocardial Infarction. Epidemiology, published online December 29, 2008.
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