Aircraft Noise and Cardiovascular Outcomes (ANCO)

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Transport noise is an under-studied environmental pollutant that almost everyone is exposed to. Exposure to noise has well known biological effects including sleep disturbance, short-term increases in blood pressure and heart rate, and raised stress levels. There are many studies documenting annoyance in relation to noise exposure but there are relatively few studies looking at health and most of these are on road traffic noise. These previous health studies have shown associations with increases in blood pressure and also increased risk of heart disease and stroke. There are very few studies on aircraft noise. This is of concern as aircraft noise already affects more people in the UK than any other European country according to the Civil Aviation Authority. There are important gaps in the current evidence base relating to health impacts of aircraft noise, which this proposal addresses.The proposed work assembles a team with internationally recognised expertise in researching population health effects of transport noise and noise exposure assessment. In our previous research we demonstrated associations between road traffic noise and mortality and stroke in London 2003-10, and with heart disease and stroke risk in areas exposed to highest levels of aircraft noise around Heathrow in 2001-2005. We propose to follow-up this work and extend our analyses to 2006-15 and to include other major airports (e.g.Birmingham and Manchester). We will investigate whether there is a link between aircraft noise and mortality and hospital admissions in recent years - although there are more aircraft flying, these are quieter and average noise levels experienced by those living near airports have reduced. We will also investigate health effects of noise in two different studies of adults followed up for 6-27 years, with a wide range of clinical investigations into functioning of the heart and blood vessels and also blood tests relating to heart disease and diabetes risks. One of these is the very large UK Biobank study, with >100,000 individuals living near large UK airports. A second study is the Southall And Brent REvisited (SABRE) cohort of individuals living in West London (near Heathrow airport), initially investigated in 1988. In both UK Biobank and SABRE we will examine aircraft noise in relation to heart and circulatory disease deaths, hospital admissions and risk factors including high blood pressure and sleep disturbance. A major strength of this study is that, working with the Civil Aviation Authority, we will have access to noise estimates going back to the late 1980s as well as up to the present day Our analyses will take into account exposures to road traffic noise and to air pollution from both road vehicles and from aeroplanes. For the latter we will make measurements of extremely small particles that are emitted from jet engines and may accompany high noise exposures near airports. This will allow us to produce estimates of health effects of aircraft noise independent from other exposures occurring at the same time. We will also look at different noise metrics to investigate effects of aircraft noise on health. Currently most studies use average noise levels, but we will investigate other metrics including number of noisy events and time of day or night that noise occurs.Our results will inform national policy relating to aircraft noise and airport planning, and will potentially be used by the Noise and Nuisance Technical and Evidence Team at the Dept for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Civil Aviation Authority, Public Health England, the NGO Environmental Protection UK (who run 'Noise Action Week') and local councils near large UK airports.