Living under flights bad for heart

After studying 4.6 million adults across Switzerland, 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,” said researcher Matthias Egger of the University of Bern.

This isn’t the first time that noise has been linked to negative health effects, including cardiovascular risks.

But this study could help determine whether the sound is really exerting the 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 Egger. “By looking at airports we were in a position to disentangle these effects.”

Egger and colleagues identified 15,532 heart attack deaths among 4.6 million Swiss residents between 2000 and 2005 using information from an ongoing mortality study called the Swiss National Cohort. After accounting for air pollution and other factors including education and income levels, the group found that both the level and duration of aircraft noise drove up the risk of a lethal heart attack.