Get the latest tech news
Traffic noise hurts children's brains
As awareness grows of the toll noise has on children's health and learning, some cities show the way to quieter roads and classrooms.
The UN has warned that urban noise pollution is becoming a"global public health menace", which already leads to 12,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union, and affects an estimated 100 million Americans. A 2022 study found that road traffic noise experienced by primary school children in Barcelona, Spain, slowed down their working memory and attention span, which is considered essential for many aspects of learning including problem-solving, reasoning, mathematics, and language comprehension. "If you constantly feel aroused by sound, this could increase the cortisol response related to stress, and over time can have detrimental effects on physical and emotional health from childhood into adulthood," says Iroise Dumontheill, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Birkbeck University in London.
Or read this on Hacker News
