Exposure to environmental stressors can impair children's health and their cognitive
development. The effects of air pollution, lead, and chemicals have been studied,
but there has been less emphasis on the effects of noise. Our aim, therefore, was
to assess the effect of exposure to aircraft and road traffic noise on cognitive performance
and health in children.
We did a cross-national, cross-sectional study in which we assessed 2844 of 3207 children
aged 9-10 years who were attending 89 schools of 77 approached in the Netherlands,
27 in Spain, and 30 in the UK located in local authority areas around three major
airports. We selected children by extent of exposure to external aircraft and road
traffic noise at school as predicted from noise contour maps, modelling, and on-site
measurements, and matched schools within countries for socioeconomic status. We measured
cognitive and health outcomes with standardised tests and questionnaires administered
in the classroom. We also used a questionnaire to obtain information from parents
about socioeconomic status, their education, and ethnic origin.
We identified linear exposure-effect associations between exposure to chronic aircraft
noise and impairment of reading comprehension (p=0.0097) and recognition memory (p=0.0141),
and a non-linear association with annoyance (p<0.0001) maintained after adjustment
for mother's education, socioeconomic status, longstanding illness, and extent of
classroom insulation against noise. Exposure to road traffic noise was linearly associated
with increases in episodic memory (conceptual recall: p=0.0066; information recall:
p=0.0489), but also with annoyance (p=0.0047). Neither aircraft noise nor traffic
noise affected sustained attention, self-reported health, or overall mental health.
Our findings indicate that a chronic environmental stressor-aircraft noise-could impair
cognitive development in children, specifically reading comprehension. Schools exposed
to high levels of aircraft noise are not healthy educational environments.