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Will Workplace Noise Cause Heart Disease? According to the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, as many as 41 million American workers have a history of noise exposure and about 22 million are affected each year. Meanwhile, workplace noise costs the US economy over $242 million each year to compensate people who develop hearing loss from occupational noise exposure. People were just complaining that noise is annoying 10 years ago, but the effect of noise on health is increasingly being recognized. Besides hearing loss, loud noise can cause sleep disturbance, poor cognitive performance. It may also trigger or worsen migraine attacks in people who suffer from migraine. A recent study by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) stressed that reducing workplace noise levels can not only prevent hearing loss but also have impact on blood pressure and cholesterol. NIOSH is part of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The scientists analyzed data from the 2014 U.S. National Health Interview Survey and published the results March 14, 2018 in the ‘American Journal of Industrial Medicine’. Their findings showed that 12 percent of the current workers experienced hearing difficulty, 24 percent developed high blood pressure, and 28 percent had high cholesterol levels. They also found that work-related noise exposure was linked to 58 percent of hearing problems, 14 percent of high blood pressure cases, and 9 percent of high cholesterol cases. High blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are known risk factors for heart disease.
Earlier studies have found an association between
noisy working environment and heart disease, too. A study published in March
2011 in journal ‘Occupational and Environmental Medicine’ reported that people
who work in noisy workplaces for at least a year and a half were 2 to 3 times
more likely to have problems including a heart attack and severe chest pain,
compared to those who work in quiet environments. Researchers from the
University of British Columbia examined 6,307 people who were at least 20 years
old and employed, in a U.S. health survey from 1999 to 2004.
In another study also published in the journal ‘Occupational and Environmental Medicine’ in January 2016, researchers from University of Kentucky College of Public Health and other institutions found a link between heart disease and loud workplace noise, with the risk highest in people with high-frequency hearing loss. Meanwhile, in a recent study published in February 5. 2018 in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’, researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany analyzed data from previous studies that linked loud noise with heart disease and other health problems and concluded that exposure to noise in the workplace raised the risk of heart disease. Noise may disrupt the body’s normal process, inducing stress responses and activating a fight or flight response of the nervous system. A high level of stress hormones can cause the arteries to constrict and damage the lining of the arteries leading to heart disease. It can also raise blood pressure or make the blood more likely to clot, which is a problem with heart attacks. Jobs such as welders, garage mechanics, forklift operators, construction workers, and even dentists, nursery school teachers and classical musicians are among professions that report loud environments. Although there is no set threshold to establish risk, it is believed that chronic exposure to sound over 60 decibels, corresponding to the sound of a typical office conversation, has the potential of causing cardiovascular disease. For comparison, the sound made when a telephone rings is about 80 decibels while the sound an airplane makes on take-off is about 120 decibels.
Undoubtedly, noise reduction in the workplace is
critical, not only to prevent hearing loss, but also to reduce heart disease
risk. Recommendations by experts to employers include using earplugs or
noise-canceling headphones, replacing noisy machinery with quiet alternatives,
introducing other noise control measures like job rotation and readjustment of
workers’ duties to minimize their exposure to noise at the workplace.
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