Ideas Galore

A new data has provided the link showing that there are earlier deaths because of noise. Until now noise is a form of pollution that most people are not aware of, that it has a detrimental impact to their health. Thousands of people around the world are dying untimely from heart disease brought about by long term exposure to excessive noise a research by World Health Organization (WHO). The world body’s working group on the Noise Environmental Burden on Disease has began working on the health effects of noise in Europe in 2003.

In addition to the heart disease link, it has found that two percent of Europeans suffer severely disturb sleep because of noise pollution and fifteen percent has suffered severe annoyance. Chronic exposure to load traffic noise causes three percent of tinnitus cases, in which people constantly hear a noise in their ears.

Research in recent years has shown that noise can increase the levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline in the body, even during sleep. The longer these hormones stay in circulation around the blood stream, the more likely they are to cause life threatening physiological problems.

High stress levels can lead to heart failure strokes, high blood pressure and immune problems. The WHO came to its figures by comparing household with abnormally high exposure to noise with those in quieter homes.

According to WHO guidelines, the noise threshold for cardiovascular problems is chronic night time exposure of fifty decibels (50 db) or above-the noise of light traffic. For sleep disturbance, the threshold is forty two decibels (42 db), for general annoyance it is thirty five decibels (35 db), the sound of whisper.

With our environment getting busier and noisier, noise pollution can be stressful and it can trigger heart attack to people with heart ailment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 3:49 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.