%0 Journal Article
%T Associations between Chronic Community Noise Exposure and Blood Pressure at Rest and during Acute Noise and Non-Noise Stressors among Urban School Children in India
%A Stephen J. Lepore
%A Bhaskar Shejwal
%A Bang Hyun Kim
%A Gary W. Evans
%J International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
%D 2010
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/ijerph7093457
%X The present study builds on prior research that has examined the association between childrenĄ¯s chronic exposure to community noise and resting blood pressure and blood pressure dysregulation during exposure to acute stressors. A novel contribution of the study is that it examines how chronic noise exposure relates to blood pressure responses during exposure to both noise and non-noise acute stressors. The acute noise stressor was recorded street noise and the non-noise stressor was mental arithmetic. The sample consisted of 189 3rd and 6th grade children (51.9% percent boys; 52.9% 3rd graders) from a noisy (n = 95) or relatively quiet (n = 94) public school in the city of Pune, India. There were no statistically significant differences between chronic noise levels and resting blood pressure levels. However, relative to quiet-school children, noisy-school children had significantly lower increases in blood pressure when exposed to either an acute noise or non-noise stressor. This finding suggests that chronic noise exposure may result in hypo-reactivity to a variety of stressors and not just habituation to noise stressors.
%K noise
%K blood pressure
%K stress
%K reactivity
%K habituation
%U http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/9/3457