New Study Finds Traffic Noise Raises Chances For A Heart Attack By 72%

 If you’ve ever worked in a retail environment in which the same playlist is spun all day long at loud volume, you understand the impact of noise pollution on your physical and mental health. I may not want to admit it, but it's not a stretch to say that cars contribute to general noise pollution, especially in the cities. If you're a car person, though, it might feel more like a lullaby than a nuisance. Personally, every time my neighbor fires up his black 1963 Corvette I run to the window to get a better listen.

Researchers at Rutgers’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey conducted a study with 16,000 New Jersey residents to investigate the effects of noise on the body, and Streetsblog USA extrapolated the outcome. The results were perhaps unsurprising: The rate of heart attacks is 72 percent higher in urban areas with high amounts of transportation noise. On top of that, five percent of hospitalizations for heart attacks are directly traceable to noise.

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