Abstract
BackgroundAn increasing number of children are exposed to road traffic noise levels that may lead to adverse effects on health and daily functioning. Childhood is a period of intense growth and brain maturation, and children may therefore be especially vulnerable to road traffic noise. The objective of the present study was to examine whether road traffic noise was associated with reported inattention symptoms in children, and whether this association was mediated by sleep duration.MethodsThis study was based on the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Parental reports of children’s inattention at age 8 were linked to modelled levels of residential road traffic noise. We investigated the association between inattention and noise exposure during pregnancy (n = 1934), noise exposure averaged over 5 years (age 3 to 8 years; n = 1384) and noise exposure at age 8 years (n = 1384), using fractional logit response models. The participants were children from Oslo, Norway.ResultsAn association with inattention at age 8 years was found for road traffic noise exposure at age 8 years (coef = .0083, CI = [.0012, .0154]; 1.2% point increase in inattention score per 10 dB increase in noise level), road traffic noise exposure average for the last 5 years (coef = .0090, CI = [.0016, .0164]; 1.3% point increase/10 dB), and for pregnancy road traffic noise exposure for boys (coef = .0091, CI = [.0010, .0171]), but not girls (coef = −.0021, CI = [−.0094, .0053]). Criteria for doing mediation analyses were not fulfilled.ConclusionResults indicate that road traffic noise has a negative impact on children’s inattention. We found no mediation by sleep duration.
Highlights
An increasing number of children are exposed to road traffic noise levels that may lead to adverse effects on health and daily functioning
About 40% of EU inhabitants are exposed to road traffic noise levels likely to be harmful to health, and the proportion is expected to increase [1, 2]
All analyses were done in Stata version 14.0 (StataCorp, TX, USA) [63]. In both samples, there was a decrease in household income with increasing road traffic noise
Summary
An increasing number of children are exposed to road traffic noise levels that may lead to adverse effects on health and daily functioning. The objective of the present study was to examine whether road traffic noise was associated with reported inattention symptoms in children, and whether this association was mediated by sleep duration. Some studies on noise exposure in children have found increases in blood pressure, stress, annoyance, hyperactivity and behavior difficulties [7,8,9,10,11], and there is some evidence for associations with impaired. Weyde et al Environmental Health (2017) 16:127 and exam scores [18,19,20] It is associated with increased probability of dropping out of school [21]. Traffic noise at school has been found to affect attention measured by both neuropsychological tests [15] and teacher observations [22]
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