Elsevier

Environmental Research

Volume 143, Part A, November 2015, Pages 154-161
Environmental Research

Long-term exposure to residential traffic noise and changes in body weight and waist circumference: A cohort study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2015.10.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Traffic noise induce sleep disturbance and stress.

  • Sleep disturbances and stress may affect the human metabolism and lead to changes in weight and waist circumference.

  • A nationwide case-control study with historical, residential modeling of traffic noise.

  • We find small effects of traffic noise on development of adiposity.

Abstract

Background

Traffic noise can act as a stressor and disturb sleep, and has been associated with cardiovascular disease. Recent studies suggest a possible association to metabolic outcomes and adiposity through biological mechanisms related to physiological stress and sleep disturbance.

Objectives

We aimed to investigate the association between long-term residential traffic noise and changes in adiposity.

Materials and methods

The study was based on 39,720 middle-aged Danish men and women from a cohort, with information on weight and waist circumference at two points in time. Residential exposure to traffic noise was calculated for all participants’ present and historical addresses using the Nordic prediction method. The associations between traffic noise and changes in adiposity measures after a mean follow-up of 5.3 years were analyzed by linear and logistic regression with adjustments for age, sex, socioeconomic position and lifestyle factors in three models with increasing adjustment.

Results

In linear models adjusted for sex, age, socioeconomic position and competing noise sources we found road traffic noise to be significantly associated with small gains in both weight and waist circumference. For example, time-weighted mean exposure 5-years preceding follow-up was associated with a yearly weight gain of 15.4 g (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.14; 28.7) and a yearly increase in waist circumference of 0.22 mm (95% CI: 0.018; 0.43) per 10 dB. Similarly, in Poisson regression models we found an 10% increased risk for gaining more than 5 kg body weight during follow-up (95% CI: 1.04; 1.15) per 10 dB higher 5 years exposure preceding follow-up. Exposure to railway noise above 55 dB was associated with weight gain (39.9 g/year (95% CI: 10.2; 69.6)), but not with a significant change in waist circumference. We found baseline BMI (p<0.001) and waist circumference (p=0.001) to be significant effect modifiers for the association between road traffic noise and waist circumference, with gain in waist circumference only among the obese (BMI≥30) participants (1.20 mm/year (95% CI: 0.68; 1.72)) and participants with a large waist circumference (0.83 mm/year (95% CI: 0.42; 1.23)).

Conclusion

The findings supports previous studies suggesting that traffic noise may be associated with development of adiposity. However, the potential effects are small and suggest an effect mainly among obese participants.

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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