Recent advances in research on non-auditory effects of community noise

Abstract

Non-auditory effects of noise on humans have been intensively studied in the last four decades. The International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise has been following scientific advances in this field by organizing international congresses from the first one in 1968 in Washington, DC, to the 11th congress in Nara, Japan, in 2014. There is already a large scientific body of evidence on the effects of noise on annoyance, communication, performance and behavior, mental health, sleep, and cardiovascular functions including relationship with hypertension and ischemic heart disease. In the last five years new issues in this field have been tackled. Large epidemiological studies on community noise have reported its relationship with breast cancer, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. It seems that noise-induced sleep disturbance may be one of the mediating factors in these effects. Given a large public health importance of the above-mentioned diseases, future studies should more thoroughly address the mechanisms underlying the reported association with community noise exposure.