Long-term exposure to residential traffic noise and changes in body weight and waist circumference: A cohort study
Section snippets
Background/introduction
Traffic noise has been consistently associated with cardiovascular disease (Babisch, 2014) as well as non-clinical outcomes such as stress, annoyance and sleep disturbance (Basner et al., 2014, Miedema and Oudshoorn, 2001, Miedema and Vos, 2007). Recently, also metabolic outcomes have become a focus of noise research., Road traffic noise has been positively associated with higher risk of diabetes (Sorensen et al., 2013) as well as higher BMI and waist circumference, though not consitently (
Study population
The present study was based on the Danish Diet, Cancer and Health cohort, which has been described in detail previously (Tjonneland et al., 2007). Briefly, between 1993 and 1997, 160,725 persons aged 50–64 years with no history of cancer and living in either Aarhus or the greater Copenhagen area were invited to participate. In total, 57,053 accepted the invitation, representing 7% of the Danish population in this age group. Participants filled in questionnaires and height and trained laboratory
Results
In total, 45,271 persons filled in the follow-up questionnaire, and were available for the present study. Of these, 382 were excluded because they were diagnosed with cancer before baseline, 1743 were excluded due to missing exposure data, 720 persons were excluded, because of missing data on anthropometric variables at baseline or follow-up, 56 were excluded due to implausible weight changes during follow-up (>5 kg/year) and 116 were excluded due to implausible changes in waist circumference (>7
Discussion
This cohort study investigated the association between traffic noise and changes in weight and waist circumference. Road traffic noise exhibited a positive linear relationship with changes in weight and waist circumference for most exposure periods. Furthermore, road traffic noise was associated with increased risk for gaining 5 kg or more during follow-up. Railway noise also seemed positively associated with adiposity in categorical analyses, though there were no associations when railway noise
Conclusions
The present study finds associations between traffic noise and increases in bodyweight and waist circumference, mainly among participants who were already obese at baseline. The observed effects were, however, small. Future prospective studies should utilize cohorts with anthropological data measured by trained technicians at follow-up as well as baseline.
Acknowledgements
Nick Martinussen assisted with programming and data management and is acknowledged for his work. The European Research Council, EU 7th Research Framework Programme funded this study (Grant number: 281760).
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