
That road noise outside your window could be wreaking havoc on your blood pressure. A new study published March 22 in JACC: Advances found that the roaring engines, blaring horns and wailing sirens can themselves elevate high blood pressure (hypertension) risk, aside from questions about the impact of air pollution. “We were a little surprised that the association between road traffic noise and hypertension was robust even after adjustment for air pollution,” lead author Jing Huang said in a journal news release. She is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health at Peking University in Beijing. To study this, Huang and her colleagues analyzed data from more than 240,000 people in the UK Biobank. They were 40 to 69 years of age and did not have high blood pressure when the study began. Road traffic noise estimates were based on residential addresses and a European noise assessment tool. Using data over a median of about eight years, researchers found that participants who lived near road traffic noise were more likely to develop high blood pressure and that their risk rose as noise increased. The finding held even after researchers adjusted for exposure to fine particles and nitrogen dioxide in the air. People who had high exposure to both traffic noise and air pollution had the highest risk for high blood pressure. “Road traffic… read on > read on >