Heart attack survivors living close to highways face higher 10-year death risk (USA)

Living close to a major highway poses a significant risk to heart attack survivors, reinforcing the need to isolate housing developments from heavy traffic areas, a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center study concludes. Writing in the May 7 edition of Circulation, researchers found heart attack survivors living less than 100 meters or 328 feet from a roadway have a 27 percent higher risk of over within 10 years than survivors living at least 1,000 meters away. That risk recedes to 13 percent for those living between 200 and 1,000-meter or 656 to 3,277-feet from the roadway. "Living close to a highway is associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes in those with underlying cardiac disease," says Murray Mittleman, MD, DrPH, a physician in the CardioVascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of BIDMC's cardiovascular epidemiological research program. "Besides air pollution, exposure to noise could be a possible mechanism underlying this association." The Onset study of 3,547 heart attack survivors in 64 community hospitals and tertiary care medical centers recorded 1,071 deaths over 10 years. Of that total, 63 percent of the patients died of cardiovascular disease, 12 percent died of cancer and 4 percent expired from respiratory disease. Researchers analyzed factors such as personal, clinical and neighborhood-level characteristics such as income and education

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"

People working in loud places might have triple the risk of a heart problem, study says

What's bad for your ears may also be bad for your heart. According to a new study, people who work in noisy places for at least a year and a half could have triple the risk of a serious heart problem compared to those who work in quiet environments, a new study says. Gan Wenqi of the University of British Columbia examined more than 6,000 people who were at least 20 years old and employed, in a U.S. health survey from 1999 to 2004. Most of the study participants working in loud workplaces were men aged 40 and were more likely to have other heart risk factors like having a higher than normal Body Mass Index and smoking. After statistically adjusting for those variables, Gan still found people working in loud places had a higher chance of heart disease. Participants were asked to rate how noisy their workplace was and how long they were exposed to it. A workplace was classified as noisy if people had to raise their voices to have a conversation. Gan found people who worked in loud environments for at least one year and a half years were two to three times more likely to have problems including a heart attack and severe chest pain. The study was paid for by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and others. It was published online Wednesday in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a specialist journal of the BMJ.

Road noise link to blood pressure

"People living near noisy roads are at greater risk of developing high blood pressure, a Swedish study suggests. A Lund University team found risk rose above an average daily exposure of 60 decibels, which accounts for about one in four people in western Europe. They said it was likely noise caused stress - and maybe sleep disruption - leading to blood pressure problems. But UK experts questioned the findings, saying other factors such as diet and smoking were more important. Researchers analysed questionnaires completed by nearly 28,000 people as well as analysing neighbourhood traffic noise" - BBC

Too much noise linked to heart attack, high blood pressure risk (UK)

Too much exposure to noise can increase the risk heart attacks and high blood pressure problems, according to an official report. British experts call the problem 'serious', and say that it must be treated alongside smoking and drinking as a major health issue. They warned that there was an increasing problem of noise from neighbours, loud music, airports and roads - New Kerala