TY - JOUR T1 - Long term effects of traffic noise on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, 2004-2007 JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 44 IS - Suppl 58 SP - P1951 AU - Aurelio Tobias AU - Diego Varga AU - Maria Barcelo AU - Julio Díaz AU - Marc Saez Y1 - 2014/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/P1951.abstract N2 - Several studies have found an association between traffic noise and adverse health effects, both, morbidity and mortality. Some authors question these because of the high association between traffic noise and air pollution. However, recently several studies have shown an independent short-term association between noise and cardiovascular and respiratory mortality from the effect of air pollutants that are routinely measured.Our objective here is to provide evidence of an independent long-term association between traffic noise and mortality due to COPD.We used a case-control design with individual data. Ascases, we use deaths fromCOPD (for which we georeferencedtheir address)between 2004 and2007 inthe Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR), Spain. As controls, we used deaths byAIDSand external causes, matched by sex and age. We used the annual mean of daytime noise level for RGM and controlled for confounders: i) air pollutants (NO2, PM10 and benzene); material deprivation (at a census tract level); and several land use variables. We explicitly controlled for spatial misalignment (i.e. the response and all the exposure measurements had different spatial locations); heterogeneity; and spatio-temporal dependency. Analyses were done separately for men and for women.We estimated a risk increase of COPD mortality of 6.01% (95CI 3.76%-8.17%) for an increased annual mean of daytime interquartile range 7.613 dB(A). This risk was not confounded by any variable. No effect was found for women and for subjects aged <65 years.Our results suggest that the associations indicating the long-term effects of exposure to traffic noise are not spurious. ER -