March 23, 2023 – Living near a busy road could be harmful to your health, and never simply because of air pollution.
Traffic noise from horns, engines and sirens can increase the blood pressure of residents, in response to a UK study published within the journal. JACC: Progress.
“Long-term exposure to road traffic noise was associated with a higher incidence of primary hypertension, and effect estimates were stronger at higher levels of air pollution,” the researchers reported.
They examined data from greater than 240,000 people aged between 40 and 69 who didn’t have hypertension at the beginning of the study. The data got here from the biomedical database UK Biobank.
For people living near traffic noise, health risks increase with increasing noise intensity, even when adjusted for air pollution.
People who’re most exposed to noise and pollution have the best risk of developing hypertension.
“We did not identify a noise threshold at which the risk began to increase. The risk increased with increasing noise levels, starting at the lowest category measured in the study,” said lead creator Kazem Rahimi, professor of cardiovascular medicine and population health on the University of Oxford. CNN.
“The association was graded: That is, the higher the noise level, the higher the risk of high blood pressure in the future,” Rahimi said.
An estimated 1.28 billion adults worldwide have hypertension, says the World Health Organization. High blood pressure increases the chance of heart disease and stroke, that are the leading causes of death within the United States. Other contributing aspects include age, genetics, obesity, weight loss program and physical activity.