Abstract
The present study builds on prior research that has examined the association between children’s chronic exposure to community noise and resting blood pressure and blood pressure dysregulation during exposure to acute stressors. A novel contribution of the study is that it examines how chronic noise exposure relates to blood pressure responses during exposure to both noise and non-noise acute stressors. The acute noise stressor was recorded street noise and the non-noise stressor was mental arithmetic. The sample consisted of 189 3rd and 6th grade children (51.9% percent boys; 52.9% 3rd graders) from a noisy (n = 95) or relatively quiet (n = 94) public school in the city of Pune, India. There were no statistically significant differences between chronic noise levels and resting blood pressure levels. However, relative to quiet-school children, noisy-school children had significantly lower increases in blood pressure when exposed to either an acute noise or non-noise stressor. This finding suggests that chronic noise exposure may result in hypo-reactivity to a variety of stressors and not just habituation to noise stressors.
Highlights
Many children throughout the world, but especially those in developing countries, are chronically exposed to high levels of community noise [1]
We identified sex of the child as a covariate because Body Mass Index (BMI) was significantly higher in girls than boys (t187 = 2.69, p = 0.008) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) reactivity during the math challenge was trending toward being higher in girls than boys (t187 = 1.72, p = 0.09)
The present results suggest a possible link between chronic noise exposures related to street traffic surrounding elementary schools and diminished blood pressure responses to acute noise and non-noise stressors in elementary-school-aged children
Summary
Many children throughout the world, but especially those in developing countries, are chronically exposed to high levels of community noise [1]. Stress theory has been applied to help explain a variety of ill effects attributed to chronic noise exposure [1,3,4], including dysregulation of blood pressure [4,5,6]. We examine how chronic noise exposure relates to children’s resting blood pressure and the regulation of blood pressure responses to acute stressors. To the extent that chronic noise exposure in children is associated with higher than average levels of blood pressure at rest and during stressors, it could be a risk factor for cardiovascular and coronary heart disease. To the extent that chronic noise exposure has the opposite effect of diminishing children’s level of arousal in response to acute stressors, it could undermine adaptive behavioral coping responses and other biological processes relevant to health and disease processes [10]
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