Abstract
Noise is pervasive in everyday life and can cause both auditory and non-auditory health effects. Noise-induced hearing loss remains highly prevalent in occupational settings, and is increasingly caused by social noise exposure (eg, through personal music players). Our understanding of molecular mechanisms involved in noise-induced hair-cell and nerve damage has substantially increased, and preventive and therapeutic drugs will probably become available within 10 years. Evidence of the non-auditory effects of environmental noise exposure on public health is growing. Observational and experimental studies have shown that noise exposure leads to annoyance, disturbs sleep and causes daytime sleepiness, affects patient outcomes and staffperformance in hospitals, increases the occurrence of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and impairs cognitive performance in schoolchildren. In this Review, we stress the importance of adequate noise prevention and mitigation strategies for public health.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1325-1332 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | The Lancet |
| Volume | 383 |
| Issue number | 9925 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Dietmar Wurzel for designing and providing figure 1 . MBA is partly funded by National Institutes of Health grant NR004281 . CC is a member of the Airports Commission's External Advisory Panel in the UK. SS is a member of the Acoustics Review Group for ARUP High Speed Two (HS2).
Funding Information:
Several therapeutic avenues have been recently explored, and oral drugs to protect against noise-induced hearing loss are expected to become available in the next 10 years. 13 Investigators have reported that oxidative stress could contribute to cochlear cell damage; antioxidant compounds, such as glutathione, have improved noise-induced hearing loss in animals and might prevent noise-induced hearing loss. 36,37 An oral otoprotective drug, D-methionine, prevents noise-induced hearing loss in animals even when first given within hours after a noise exposure; however, only formal clinical trials will provide the data needed to assess safety and efficacy in human beings. 38 Clinical trials of D-methionine in the US Army, funded by the US Department of Defense, are scheduled to begin soon ( NCT01345474 ). 38
