Aircraft Noise and Cardiovascular Outcomes (ANCO)

交通噪声是一种研究不足的环境污染物，几乎每个人都会接触到。暴露在噪音中有众所周知的生物效应，包括睡眠障碍、血压和心率的短期增加，以及压力水平的增加。有许多研究记录了与噪音暴露有关的烦恼，但关注健康的研究相对较少，其中大部分是关于道路交通噪音的研究。这些先前的健康研究表明，血压的增加与心脏病和中风的风险增加有关。关于飞机噪声的研究很少。根据英国民航局的数据，这一点令人担忧，因为飞机噪音在英国的影响人数已经超过其他任何欧洲国家。目前与飞机噪音对健康的影响有关的证据基础存在重大差距，这项建议旨在解决这一问题。拟议的工作组建了一个拥有国际公认的专业知识的团队，研究交通噪音对人群健康的影响和噪音暴露评估。在我们之前的研究中，我们证明了2003-10年伦敦的道路交通噪音与死亡率和中风之间的关系，以及2001-2005年希思罗机场周围暴露于最高水平飞机噪音的地区的心脏病和中风风险之间的关系。我们建议跟进这项工作，并将我们的分析扩展至2006-15年度，并包括其他主要机场(例如伯明翰和曼彻斯特)。我们将调查近年来飞机噪音与死亡率和入院人数之间是否存在联系--尽管飞行的飞机更多，但这些飞机更安静，居住在机场附近的人感受到的平均噪音水平也有所降低。我们还将在两项不同的成人研究中调查噪音对健康的影响，对成年人进行6-27年的跟踪调查，对心脏和血管的功能进行广泛的临床调查，并进行与心脏病和糖尿病风险有关的血液测试。其中之一是英国生物库的一项超大型研究，该研究对10万名英国人居住在英国大型机场附近进行了调查。第二项研究是索索尔和布伦特对居住在伦敦西部(希思罗机场附近)的个人重新访问(SABRE)队列，最初是在1988年进行的调查。在英国生物库和SABRE，我们将研究飞机噪音与心脏和循环系统疾病死亡、住院和包括高血压和睡眠障碍在内的风险因素的关系。这项研究的一个主要优点是，我们与民航局合作，可取得八十年代末期以来的噪音估计数字，而直至今日，我们的分析亦会考虑道路交通噪音及道路车辆和飞机所造成的空气污染。对于后者，我们将对喷气发动机排放的极小颗粒物进行测量，这些颗粒物可能会伴随机场附近的高噪音暴露。这将使我们能够独立于同时发生的其他暴露，对飞机噪音对健康的影响进行估计。我们还将研究不同的噪音指标，以调查飞机噪音对健康的影响。目前大多数研究使用平均噪音水平，但我们将调查其他指标，包括噪音事件的数量和噪音发生的白天或夜间时间。我们的结果将为与飞机噪音和机场规划相关的国家政策提供参考，并可能被环境、食品和农村事务部(Defra)、民航局、公共卫生英格兰分局、非政府组织英国环境保护组织(他们开展了噪音行动周)和英国大型机场附近的地方议会使用。

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.