Research: Women Living Near Freeways Increase Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death

"While researchers previously found a modest increase in coronary heart disease risk among people who live near major roadways, the new study may be the first to examine the impact of roadway proximity to the risk of sudden cardiac death," writes the Science Daily staff.

"It's important for healthcare providers to recognize that environmental exposures may be under-appreciated risk factors for diseases such as sudden cardiac death and fatal coronary heart disease," said Jaime E. Hart, Sc.D., study lead author and an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. "On a population level, living near a major roadway was as important a risk factor as smoking, diet or obesity."

While "evidence is growing of air pollution’s link to heart disease and death," the research did not point to specific causes of the roadway-proximate heart failures. Specific findings mentioned in the American Heart Association (AHA) news release include:

• In 523 cases of sudden cardiac death, living within 50 meters (164 feet) of a major road increased the risk of sudden cardiac death by 38 percent, compared to living at least 500 meters (.3 miles) away.
• Each 100 meters (328 feet) closer to roadways was associated with a 6 percent increased risk for sudden cardiac death.

The reason for the findings only being applied to women is because "(t)he researchers studied data from 107,130 women (predominantly white, average age 60) who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study from 1986-2012," according to the news release.

“Our next step is to try to determine what specific exposures, such as air pollution, are driving the association between heart disease and major roadway proximity.”

In addition, the news release indicated that "more research is needed among men and among women of different ages, races and income levels because nearly all participants were middle-age to elderly, white and of middle- to upper-socioeconomic class."

For more information, read the abstract of the study, "Roadway Proximity and Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death in Women" in the "Epidemiology and Prevention" section in the Oct. 21 edition of AHA's journal, Circulation.