Study links traffic noise and common, vexing hearing problem

Individuals’s danger rose 6 p.c with each 10-decibel improve in highway site visitors noise in contrast with controls. Ranges rose the longer an individual had been uncovered to larger highway site visitors noise. Girls, folks and not using a earlier historical past of listening to loss, and other people with larger training and revenue had been at elevated danger.

The research didn’t discover an affiliation between railway noise and tinnitus diagnoses.

Although the paper exhibits an affiliation between tinnitus and site visitors noise, it doesn’t show that one causes the opposite. The researchers say it’s necessary to study extra concerning the potential results of residential noise publicity — and posit that if site visitors noise does trigger tinnitus, it would achieve this by disrupting folks’s sleep.

“We all know that site visitors noise could make us pressured and have an effect on our sleep. And that tinnitus can worsen after we dwell underneath hectic conditions and we don’t sleep properly,” mentioned Jesper Hvass Schmidt, an affiliate professor on the College of Southern Denmark and the paper’s co-author, in a information release.

All however 19 p.c of the tinnitus circumstances had prior listening to loss. For the Danes with listening to loss, residing with highway site visitors was related to fewer tinnitus diagnoses. Researchers speculate that maybe site visitors noise masks tinnitus for some.

At the moment, there isn’t a goal check to diagnose tinnitus, and the researchers word that folks could solely search medical consideration if their signs are extreme. Nonetheless, they write, the research is extra proof of “highway site visitors noise as a dangerous pollutant with a rising well being burden.”