Charlotte Clark – c.clark@qmul.ac.uk
Jenny Head
Stephen A Stansfeld
Centre for Psychiatry
Barts & the London School of Medicine
Queen Mary, University of London
London, EC1M 6BQ, UK
Popular version of paper 5aNSc1
Presented Friday morning, May 18, 2012
163rd ASA Meeting, Hong Kong
Recent years have seen increasing evidence that exposure to aircraft noise at school results in poorer learning outcomes for children, such as poorer reading ability and memory skills. However, this evidence comes mainly from studies that have examined noise exposure and learning outcomes at only one time point in the child's education. However, many children will remain exposed to environmental noise throughout their childhood and little is known about the long-term consequences of environmental noise exposure, which could persist throughout childhood, for later learning outcomes.
This paper reports on a study conducted over a 6 year period, which examined whether aircraft noise exposure in primary school, at 9-10 years of age, was associated with poorer reading ability in secondary school, at 15-16 years of age. The paper also reports on the relationship between aircraft noise exposure in secondary school and reading ability in secondary school.
The data in this paper comes from the UK sub-sample of the European Union funded RANCH study (Road traffic and Aircraft Noise exposure and children's Cognition & Health) of 2844 9-10 year old children attending schools around London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol and Madrid Barajas airports. The original RANCH study found that as aircraft noise exposure at primary school increased children performed more poorly on a test of reading ability and on a test of long-term memory.
6 years after the original study, 461 participants aged 15-16y (48% of whom had taken part in the original UK study) completed another test of their reading ability. Aircraft noise exposure at the primary and secondary schools was assessed using annual average noise exposure at the schools over the 16 hour period from 7am-11pm.
The results of this study suggested that there is a tendency for aircraft noise at primary and secondary school to be associated with poorer reading ability in secondary school: however, due to the small size of this study (N=461) it has not been possible to demonstrate statistically significant relationships of aircraft noise exposure at primary school or secondary school on reading ability. This means that future studies are needed that follow-up larger groups of children during their schooling.
Whilst this study is limited by its small sample, the findings suggest that aircraft noise exposure at school could have long-term consequences for children's learning outcomes. Our findings indicate that a chronic environmental stressor-aircraft noise-could impair learning and development in children. Schools exposed to high levels of aircraft noise are not healthy educational environments.
The research presented in this paper was funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council.