Environmental Determinants of Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus: Sounding Off About the Effects of Noise
Year: 2020
Type: editorial
Abstract: ith increasing urbanization, exposure to environmental noise and air pollution is growing.A recent update to the World Health Organization's Environmental Noise Guidelines corroborates that noise poses a risk to public health, but also shows that high-quality epidemiologic studies are still missing for several noise sources and health outcomes. 1The study by Shin et al in this issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) is a large retrospective cohort study that utilized the Ontario Population Health and Environment Cohort (ONPHEC), a cohort of Canadian-born people of Ontario who were 35 years or older in 1996 with follow-up data until 2014, to investigate the effects of road traffic noise on incident diabetes mellitus and hypertension. 2The current study was restricted to individuals who resided in Toronto for at least 5 years, and were free of hypertension (n=701 174) or type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D; n=914 607).Using spatial random-effects Cox proportional hazards models, with Toronto neighborhoods as random effects, Shin et al estimate that a 10 dBA increase in 24 hours road traffic noise was associated with an 8% elevated risk of diabetes mellitus and a 2% elevated risk of hypertension.These estimates were robust to adjustments for 2 common traffic pollutants: ultrafine particulate matter (UFP) and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ).
Institutions: University of Pennsylvania, University of Louisville
Language: English
Topic: Noise Effects and Management
Subfield: Speech and Hearing
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,750
OpenAlex ID: W3009053480