CURRENT NEWS ISSUES
Airport Noise and Kid's Memory
Health - Reuters
Study: Airport Noise May
Be Bad for Kids' Memory
Mon Sep 2, 2002 5:32 PM ET
By Charnicia E. Huggins
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The loud noise that accompanies the take-off and landing of airplanes may be more than an inconvenience for people living near airports. New study findings suggest regular exposure may also dampen children's memory.
"Aircraft noise impairs learning and memory, in particular, of difficult texts," lead study author Dr. Staffan Hygge, of the University of Gavle in Sweden, told Reuters Health. "Language-based cognitive skills are more vulnerable to noise than other cognitive skills," he added.
The study, begun in Germany before the opening of the new Munich International Airport and the closing of the old airport, involved 326 children who lived near either the old or new airport sites. The findings appear in the September issue of Psychological Science.
Children who lived within close range of the old airport experienced improvements in both their long- and short-term memory and their reading after the airport closed, the investigators report. Those newly exposed to aircraft noise when the new airport opened, however, showed a deterioration in their long-term memory and reading abilities.
This finding "provides strong causal evidence for the vulnerability of central language processing to noise exposure, and the reversible nature of the impact," the authors write.
Children who lived near the new airport also showed deterioration in their speech perception--the ability to hear spoken words when there's background noise. And a similar dip among children who lived near the old airport did not improve after the airport closed, the researchers note.
The findings may be applicable to children in the United States, according to Hygge. "Maybe even more so since, in contrast to the children studied in Germany, who were all perfectly fluent in German, the US has a substantial number of immigrants and children that are not fluent in English, which will add to the negative effects of aircraft noise," he said.
To minimize such harmful effects, Hygge advises parents to "choose schools in quiet areas and schools that meet the best building specifications according to interior noise and insulation between and within classrooms."
He suggested that "it would be interesting" to see schools rated for noise levels, in much the same way equipment like lawnmowers and dishwashers are.
According to the researcher, the findings also imply that airports should be located in areas where "few persons, and in particular, children in schools, are exposed to the noise."
The study was funded by a number of national agencies and organizations including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the National Swedish Institute for Building Research.
SOURCE: Psychological Science 2002;13.