Residential and GPS-Defined Activity Space Neighborhood Noise Complaints, Body Mass Index and Blood Pressure Among Low-Income Housing Residents in New York City
Abstract
Little is known about how neighborhood noise influences cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk among low-income populations. The aim of this study was to investigate associations between neighborhood noise complaints and body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure (BP) among lowincome housing residents in New York City (NYC), including utilizing global positioning system (GPS) data. Data came from the NYC Low-Income Housing, Neighborhoods and Health Study in 2014, including objectively measured BMI and BP data (N=102, Black=69%), and one week of GPS data. Noise reports from "NYC 311" were used to create a noise complaints density (unit: 1,000 reports/km 2) around participants' home and GPS-defined activity space neighborhoods. In fully-adjusted models, we examined associations of noise complaints density with BMI (kg/m 2), and systolic and diastolic BP (mmHg), controlling for individual-and neighborhood-level sociodemographics. We found inverse relationships between home noise density and BMI (B=-2.7 [kg/m 2 ], p=0.009), and systolic BP (B=-5.3 mmHg, P=0.008) in the fully-adjusted models, and diastolic BP (B=-3.9 mmHg, P=0.013) in age-adjusted models. Using GPS-defined activity space neighborhoods, we observed inverse associations between noise density and systolic BP (B=-10.3 mmHg, p=0.019) in fully-adjusted models and diastolic BP (B=-7.5 mmHg, p=0.016) in ageadjusted model, but not with BMI. The inverse associations between neighborhood noise and CVD risk factors were unexpected. Further investigation is needed to determine if these results are affected by unobserved confounding (e.g., variations in walkability). Examining how noise could
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Humanities and Social SciencesOrigin | Files produced by the author(s) |
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