Association between residential exposure to road traffic noise and cognitive and motor function outcomes in children and preadolescents

Background: Exposure to environmental noise is increasing in recent years but most of the previous literature in children has evaluated the effect of aircraft noise exposure at schools on cognition. Objective: To assess whether residential exposure to road traffic noise during pregnancy and childhood is associated with cognitive and motor function in children and preadolescents. Methods: The study involved 619 participants from the Spanish INMA-Sabadell cohort and 7,115 from the Dutch Generation R Study. We used noise maps to estimate the average day-evening-night road traffic noise levels at each participant's residential address during pregnancy and childhood periods. Validated tests were administered throughout childhood in both cohorts to assess non-verbal and verbal intelligence, memory, processing speed, attentional function, working memory, cognitive flexibility, risky decision-making, and fine and gross motor function. Linear models, linear mixed models, and negative binomial models were run depending on the outcome in cohort-specific analysis and combined with a random-effects meta-analysis. All models were adjusted for several socioeconomic and lifestyle variables and results corrected for multiple testing. Results: Average road traffic noise exposure levels during pregnancy and childhood were 61.3 (SD 6.0) and 61.5 (SD 5.4) dB for the INMA-Sabadell cohort and 54.6 (SD 7.9) and 53.5 (SD 6.5) dB for the Generation R Study, respectively. Road traffic noise exposure during pregnancy and childhood was not related to any of the cognitive and motor function outcomes examined in this study (e.g. −0.92 (95 % CI −2.08; 0.24) and 0.20 (95 % CI −0.96; 1.35) in overall estimates of memory and fine motor function, respectively, when road traffic noise increases by 10 dB during childhood). Conclusions: These findings suggest that child's cognitive or motor functions are not affected by residential exposure to road traffic noise. However, more studies evaluating this