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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Direct link to study: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...

The researchers found the link between living near highways and future neurological disorders to be independent of income, education, ethnicity, comorbidity, and coexisting medical conditions associated with future neurological disorders (traumatic brain injury, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, and arrhythmia).

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If is very, very, very difficult to control for all these factors. Apart from the data dredging problem, the difficulty of controlling for all confounding factors is what make so few association studies hold up when prospectively tested.

As a rough rule of thumb if the hazard ratio is not 3 or greater in an association study then it almost certainly won’t be replicated prospectively.

Re: Independent of income

Living near a noisy highway is rarely prime real estate. How do we account forincome when there are so few in that subset?

I also wouldn't discount the effect of endless stress. That is, the drone of noise. I recently moved from to a street that's fairly busy. Only in the middle of the night is it quite. I don't like it.

Also, the neighborhoods tend to be safer and more inviting than those right next to the major freeways.

I was originally thinking air quality is the major reason, but Vancouver has really good air quality overall compared to where I live in Los Angeles. I would be interested in seeing this type of study be done across cities with different air quality.

I was thinking the same. Most major urban areas have air quality issues and warnings.

Given that Vancouver has good air quality, the difference between living 150 meters from a highway vs. further might be more pronounced than if living in LA where the baseline pollution level is high enough that living next to a highway doesn't give meaningfully higher exposure.

L.A. keeps building near freeways, even though living there makes people sick[1].

[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-freeway-pollution/

> Living near a noisy highway is rarely prime real estate. How do we account forincome when there are so few in that subset?

By comparing to those with low incomes who don’t live near the highway?

Perhaps. But then you have to control for other variables, other unknowns.

It really depends on your building too. I live near a highway and getting around by car is really convenient as a result. Highway noise is not very audible due to the construction of the windows and the walls. My air quality meter says the PM1.0, PM2.5 & PM10 counts are 3-1 ug/m^3 inside and I don't have air filters on.

What air quality meter do you use, if you don’t mind my asking?

I live next to a highway and am concerned about air quality too, what meter do you use?

I have a handheld one by igeress that I got on amazon. It's basically a no name chinese one, so YMMV. They also have a pretty bad pollution problem too, so probably some of the better consumer ones are from there too.

I live in a house next to the highway. I can hear cars pass as I type this at 10pm. It’s irritating. Upper middle class homes, 250k-350k where median home price is $150k.

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