Noise from aircraft is bad for your health

"Living under a flight path with aeroplanes thundering over your head could put your heart at risk, according to a new study. Researchers found that dying from a heart attack was more common among people with increased exposure to aircraft noise. "The effect was especially evident for people who were exposed to really high levels of noise, and was dependent on how long those people had lived in the noisy place," researcher Matthias Egger of the University of Bern, said. This is not the first study to link the negative health effects, including cardiovascular risks, of living near flight paths. But this study could help determine whether the sound is really the main effect, or if it is something else tagging along with the noise, such as air pollution. "It's been a problem that when you look at road traffic noise there are both high levels of noise and high levels of air pollution," said Mr Egger. "By looking at airports we were in a position to disentangle these effects." Mr Egger and his colleagues identified 15,532 heart attack deaths among 4.6 million Swiss residents between late 2000 and the end of 2005 using detailed information from an ongoing mortality study called the Swiss National Cohort"