Keynote Speaker

Mette Sørensen

Senior researcher, Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
Professor, Department of Natural Science and Environment, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

Emerging adverse health effects of traffic noise

To gain more knowledge of the consequences of traffic noise, we estimated road and railway noise at the most and least exposed façades for all residential addresses in Denmark (1990- 2017), and linked them with personal address histories of all Danes. We subsequently estimated long-term noise exposure for 3.6 million persons aged >35 years. Using national hospital, cancer and prescription registries, we identified people with incident diseases rarely investigated in a noise context, including cancer, dementia and tinnitus. We found traffic noise to be associated with higher risk of various major diseases besides cardiometabolic diseases, suggesting that the disease burden related to traffic noise may be higher than previously anticipated.