Insights into why loud noise is bad for your health

In my neighborhood, the noise comes from people's boomboxes.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/eb-iiw042220.php

News Release 27-Apr-2020
Experimental Biology

Whether it is loud machinery at work, a busy freeway or a nearby airport, many people are exposed to high levels of noise. Two new mouse studies provide new insight into how this type of noise exposure can lead to high blood pressure and cancer-related DNA damage.

"Large studies have linked noise exposure to health problems in people," said Matthias Oelze, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the University Medical Center of Mainz in Germany. "Our new data provides additional mechanistic insights into these adverse health effects, especially high blood pressure and potentially cancer development, both leading causes of global death."

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Oelze and colleagues found that healthy mice exposed to four days of aircraft noise were more likely to develop high blood pressure. For mice with pre-established high blood pressure, this noise exposure aggravated heart damage because of a synergistic increase of oxidative stress and inflammation in the cardiovascular and neuronal systems.

In another study, the researchers observed that the same noise exposure induced oxidative DNA damage in mice. This damage led to a highly mutagenic DNA lesion that was previously associated with the development of cancer in other settings.

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