Road traffic noise, quality of life, and mental distress among older adults : evidence from Ireland
Abstract
This research contributes to an emerging evidence base that considers a possible relationship between exposure to road traffic noise and mental distress. This study aimed to determine whether chronic exposure to road traffic noise was associated with quality of life or various measures of mental distress. We spatially linked high-quality modelled noise exposure data for the cities of Dublin and Cork in Ireland to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, allowing an examination of these health outcomes among older adults while adjusting for socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics. Exposure to air pollution was also considered in the analysis, allowing any associations between noise and either quality of life or mental distress that were independent of this other stressor to be isolated. While the study did not detect evidence of an association between noise exposure and depression, anxiety, stress, or worry, it identified a negative association between exposure to road traffic noise and quality of life that was independent of a range of socio-demographic and behavioural factors. Moving from the highest quintile of noise exposure to the lowest was associated with an increase on the CASP-12 quality of life scale of 1.08 of a standard deviation.
Citation
Mac Domhnaill , C , Douglas , O , Lyons , S , Murphy , E & Nolan , A 2022 , ' Road traffic noise, quality of life, and mental distress among older adults : evidence from Ireland ' , Cities & Health , vol. Latest Articles . https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2022.2084806
Publication
Cities & Health
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2374-8834Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Description
Funding for this research was provided by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Research Programme 2014–2020, which is funded by the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications in Ireland.Collections
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