Transportation noise in relation to depression and dementia: A burden of disease study for Europe

Emerging evidence indicates that the health effects of transportation noise are broader than cardiometabolic disease in adults and neurodevelopment in children. We aimed to evaluate the evidence for a link between transportation noise and the risk of depression and dementia and to quantify the corresponding burden of disease for Europe.

Following an Umbrella+ approach, the most recent high-quality systematic review was identified, which was then combined with relevant original studies published after the selected review. Subsequently, a meta-analysis was conducted to derive up-to-date exposure-response functions, which in turn served as the basis to calculate the burden of disease from transportation noise. Exposure distribution was derived from the data reported under the Environmental Noise Directive and baseline health data were taken from the Global Burden of Disease database.

The pooled relative risk for depression and dementia were 1.059 (95%-confidence interval (CI): 1.018 to 1.103) and 1.045 (95%-CI: 1.023 to 1.067) per 10 dB L_den increase in transportation noise, respectively. This translates to an estimated annual burden of disease of 563,600 (95%-CI: 176,200 to 958,900) cases of depression and 28,200 (95%-CI: 14,600 to 41,500) cases of dementia in Europe. The respective disability-adjusted life years were 89,700 (95%-CI: 28,000 to 152,700) for depression and 113,200 (95%-CI: 58,600 to 166,300) for dementia.

We found substantial burden of depression and dementia attributable to transportation noise. However, the body of evidence for these outcomes is still considered scarce, and further research is needed to corroborate these findings.