Effects of Exposure to Road, Railway, Airport and Recreational Noise on Blood Pressure and Hypertension

Davide Petri, Gaetano Licitra, Maria Angela Vigotti and Luca Fredianelli
Additional contact information
Davide Petri: Department of Biology, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Gaetano Licitra: Institute for Chemical-Physical Processes, National Research Council, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Maria Angela Vigotti: Department of Biology, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Luca Fredianelli: IPool S.r.l., Via Cocchi 7, 56121 Pisa, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 17, 1-15

Abstract: Noise is one of the most diffused environmental stressors affecting modern life. As such, the scientific community is committed to studying the main emission and transmission mechanisms aiming at reducing citizens’ exposure, but is also actively studying the effects that noise has on health. However, scientific literature lacks data on multiple sources of noise and cardiovascular outcomes. The present cross-sectional study aims to evaluate the impact that different types of noise source (road, railway, airport and recreational) in an urban context have on blood pressure variations and hypertension. 517 citizens of Pisa, Italy, were subjected to a structured questionnaire and five measures of blood pressure in one day. Participants were living in the same building for at least 5 years, were aged from 37 to 72 years old and were exposed to one or more noise sources among air traffic, road traffic, railway and recreational noise. Logistic and multivariate linear regression models have been applied in order to assess the association between exposures and health outcomes. The analyses showed that prevalence of high levels of diastolic blood pressure (DBP) is consistent with an increase of 5 dB (A) of night-time noise (? = 0.50 95% CI: 0.18–0.81). Furthermore, increased DBP is also positively associated with more noise sensitive subjects, older than 65 years old, without domestic noise protection, or who never close windows. Among the various noise sources, railway noise was found to be the most associated with DBP (? = 0.68; 95% CI: ?1.36, 2.72). The obtained relation between DBP and night-time noise levels reinforces current knowledge.

Keywords: noise; hypertension; environmental noise; railway noise; recreational noise; airport noise; road traffic noise; blood pressure; noise annoyance; diastolic blood pressure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9145/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9145/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:17:p:9145-:d:625368

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().