He the sound that airplanes make when flying near cities can be very annoying, but a recent investigation shows that this noise, even if it is minor, can affect sleep quality.
A new analysis from the School of Public Health and Oregon State University found that Exposure to even moderate levels of aircraft noise can disrupt sleep.which complements the growing body of research on the harmful effects of environmental noise on health.
A study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives shows that people exposed to aircraft noise up to 45 decibels (dB) are more likely to get less than 7 hours of sleep. per night. For comparison, the sound of a whisper is 30 dB, the sound of a library is 40 dB, and a normal home conversation is 50 dB.
According to Matthew Bozigar, lead author of the study and assistant professor of epidemiology at OSU, and Junette Peters, lead author and assistant professor of environmental health at SPH, despite the fact that aircraft noise exposure is a common occurrence for many people. Little is known about its health effects, especially in the United States.
“This study helps us understand the possible sanitation routes where aircraft noise can spread, sleep interruption, for example,” Peters says.
For the study, Peters, Bosigar and colleagues at SPH, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health studied the effects of aircraft noise and sleep disturbances reported by more than 35,000 participants.s living in major US airports 90. Participants were selected from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), an ongoing prospective study of US nurses who completed biennial questionnaires since 1976.
The team studied aircraft noise levels every five years, from 1995 to 2015, focusing on two dimensions: night time (Lnight), which captures aircraft noise that occurs when people are sleeping, and daytime and (DNL), which captures the average noise level. within 24 hours and applies a 10 dB correction for aircraft noise occurring at night when background noise is low. DNL is also the primary metric used by the FAA to determine aircraft noise policy., and the significant noise impact threshold is above DNL 65 dB. The team linked these multi-threshold metrics to geocoded nurses’ residential addresses.
After controlling for a number of factors, including demographics, health behaviors, comorbidities, and environmental influences such as vegetation and nighttime lighting (LAN), the results showed that the chances of sleeping less than seven hours increased as exposure to aircraft noise increased..
short sleep duration was also more likely among nurses living on the west coast.near a major cargo airport or large body of water, and among nurses who reported no hearing loss.
“We found surprisingly strong associations for certain subgroups that we are still trying to understand,” Bozigar says. “For example, there was a relatively strong signal between the aircraft noise and the two measurements of intermittent sleep.short sleep duration and poor sleep quality, close to major cargo airports,” he added.
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