Neighborhood Noise Harms Kids
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May 31, 2002 -- Noisy neighborhoods with high levels of everyday sounds like street traffic and trains may have a negative impact on children's mental health and behavior in school. And researchers say children born prematurely or with low birth weight may be especially at risk.
A study published in the June issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine is one of the first to look at the effect of everyday noise exposure on child development. Researchers found noise exposure was significantly related to problems in the classroom and even mental health issues in children.
Researchers from the Institute of Hygiene and Social Medicine in Innsbruck, Austria, looked at the effect of environmental noise on more than 1,400 children aged 8 to 11. The children lived in a central Austrian area known as Tyrol, which has a number of small mountain towns and villages. The region contains a mix of industry and small business, and a busy transit route runs through it from north to south.
One group of the children was exposed to a wide range of noise levels and another group was exposed to especially high or low levels of environmental noise.
The study authors then checked the birth records of the children and got reports from their teachers about their performance and behavior in class. Each of the children was also asked how often they felt anxious, stressed, depressed, or had sleep problems.
Researchers found the amount of environmental noise the children were exposed to significantly affected how well the children behaved in class, their academic performance, their social behavior, and how easily distracted they were. The more noise they were exposed to, the worse the outcome.
But the study showed that everyday environmental noise had the biggest impact on the mental health of children who were born prematurely or with low birth weight.
"These children could be more reactive to the harmful consequences of noise because of their known greater susceptibility to behavioral problems in early childhood," write the authors.
Researchers say previous studies have focused only on the effects of exposure to major noise sources such as airports and busy highway traffic, but the majority of the population lives in less noisy areas such as the one studied in Austria.