A new study of nearly quarter of a million people in the UK suggests traffic noise may be more than just annoying, it might increase blood pressure.

The website Prevention spotted a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study involved analysing data from more than 240,000 people in the UK Biobank aged between 40 and 69, and didn’t have high blood pressure at the start of the study. The researchers then created road noise estimates based on where the participants lived and tracked them for about eight years.

They discovered that people who lived near road noise were more likely to develop high blood pressure over time compared to their counterparts who lived on quieter streets. The risk of developing high blood pressure also increased the noisier a person’s street was.

It was noted that while the researchers controlled for air pollution, people who were exposed to both high levels of air pollution and high traffic noise had the greatest risk of developing hypertension.

The researchers point out that that this study didn’t prove that traffic noise caused high blood pressure in study participants—it merely found a link between the two. However, there is some data to show this may be more than a random coincidence.

Read the full report here.

(Picture – Yay Images)