Noise and heart attack

Filed in archive Studies on November 25, 2005

A case-control study links noise with heart disease:

After adjusting for other risk factors, the investigators found:

* Men exposed to high environmental sound levels had about a 50% greater heart attack risk than did those in the reference group (exposed to less than 60 db). The odds ratio was 1.46 with a 95% confidence interval ranging between 1.02 and 2.09.
* For women, exposure to high environmental sound levels more than tripled the risk. The odds ratio was 3.36 with a 95% confidence interval ranging between 1.40 and 8.06.
* For men at work, exposure to high sound levels increased the risk by about 30%, compared with a reference group exposed to sound levels of less than 55 decibels. The odds ratio was 1.31 with a 95% confidence interval ranging between 1.01 and 1.70.