Text: Sarah Schoch, Salome Kurth, Christine Blume
The data from 144 families of the German-speaking cohort, who had agreed to further use of the data outside the original project, were used for an exciting study on the influence of traffic noise on baby sleep. The noise project was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Christine Blume from the Center for Chronobiology of the University of Basel and Dr. Jakob Usemann of the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB).
Existing studies show that traffic noise is negatively related to various health aspects. In adults, high exposure to traffic noise for instance affects sleep quality and duration, and comparable effects have also been found in children and adolescents. However, this has not yet been studied in babies.
In collaboration with Dr. Danielle Vienneau and Prof. Dr. Martin Röösli from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, we modeled traffic noise exposure in families’ homes and investigated whether nighttime traffic noise is related to the babies’ sleep during the first year of life. We focused on three variables of nighttime sleep: a) nighttime sleep duration, b) nighttime awakenings/movements during sleep, and c) variability of nighttime sleep across measurement days.
We were able to show that sleep duration was related to noise exposure: babies had less nighttime sleep when exposed to higher levels of traffic noise. However, this relationship seemed to depend on whether the babies had older siblings; only in babies without siblings traffic noise was associated with shortened nighttime sleep. For babies with older siblings, the effect even was in the other direction, i.e., these babies slept longer with more traffic noise.
Traffic noise showed no association with nighttime awakenings or variability in sleep across days.
Overall, baby sleep is little affected by traffic noise, which is positive given the importance of sleep for healthy development. However, fortunately, noise exposure was generally relatively low in the whole sample. Baby sleep may be affected by a very high level of noise exposure.
Original Work:
Blume, C.*, Schoch, S. F.*, Vienneau, D., Röösli, M., Kohler, M., Moeller, A., … & Usemann, J. (2022). Association of transportation noise with sleep during the first year of life: A longitudinal study. Environmental Research, 203, 111776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111776
* contributed equally
Photo:
Jason Leung, unsplash