Sound pollution has always been given due weightage when it comes to research papers, political speeches and scientific workshops, well people! The common man now has to become aware of it too now.
In a research conducted in The U.S, researchers have found a very strong link between loud noise and heart disease.
Dr. Wen Qi Gan of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health in Lexington, the lead author says that people who are prone to long term exposure to very loud noise due to their work or even as a leisure have increased risk of heart diseases.
In his research he found that people who lost their hearing due to high frequency noises were more likely to be affected with coronary heart disease than people who have hearing loss due to other reasons.
Although there have been a number of other publications relating high noise intensity to heart disease and a shoot u p in blood pressure, what really the researchers here found was the connection with high frequency noises. For this they studied on a data collected based on 5223 participants, aged from 20 to 69, between the years 1999 and 2004.
The research clearly indicated that those people who lost hearing in both their ears namely bilateral hearing loss due to high frequency were twice as susceptible to coronary heart diseases as their counterparts who lost hearing due to low frequency sounds.
From among these, it was evident that people who were aged 50 and below and were exposed to high frequency sound in their workplace were at a risk to getting heart problems 4 times more.
People who had hearing loss on one side and those who lost hearing due to low frequency noise did not have any risk of heart diseases.
However, since the research has data collected only once from each participant, the direct proof of this linkage is not conclusive.
Overall, it is clear that high frequency noise is dangerous and increases the possibility of coronary heart diseases which is not a good sign, especially for the younger generations.
“Using earmuffs and earplugs can reduce personal noise exposure,” cautions Gan further asking people to reduce exposure to excessive noise, at home or in your workplace.
