Residential noise can take toll on mental health

Exposure to noise, particularly in residential areas, appears to have negative consequences on mental health, as reported in a study.

Researchers looked at the effect of environmental noise from road traffic, airplanes, trains, and industrial sources on mental health and psychological distress. They obtained a 19-year longitudinal data set in Australia involving 31,387 respondents and described the sociospatial distributions of noise exposure.

In the analysis, instrumental variables, fixed-effects models, and an aggregated area-level measure of noise exposure were used to improve the capacity to make causal inference and reduce bias from measurement error, reverse causation, and unobserved confounders.

Residential noise exposure was frequently reported by private and public rental tenants, lone parents, residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, and those with long-term health conditions. This exposure to noise showed consistent associations with poorer mental health (self-reported noise: β, −0.58, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], −0.76 to −0.39; area-level noise: β, −0.43, 95 percent CI, −0.61 to −0.26). The strongest association was seen for traffic noise (β, −0.79, 95 percent CI, −1.07 to −0.51).

Of note, mental health seemed to improve when noise exposure decreased over time (β, 0.43, 95 percent CI, 0.14 to 0.72).

These findings have important implications for healthy home design and urban planning. More studies that measure noise intensity and housing quality are needed to validate the results and establish the relationship between noise exposure and mental health.