Effects of rail traffic noise and vibration on cardiometabolic health: social inequalities in exposure, social susceptibility or both? The EpiVib-equality project

This project aims to assess whether and how rail traffic noise and vibration can contribute to socioeconomic inequalities in cardiometabolic health in Sweden.

These cardiometabolic inequalities have increased in the past decades, with significant social and economic costs to individuals and societies. Environmental hazards have been associated to health inequalities. Still, this association is poorly studied in Sweden; especially in regard to rail traffic exposures in rural areas.

Two mechanisms have been proposed to explain this relationships: socioeconomic groups can be unequally exposed to noise and vibration (differential exposure) and/or the effects of these exposures on health might differ across socioeconomic groups (differential susceptibility). As rail traffic is expected to increase in Sweden, there is a need to study the effects of rail traffic on health.

EpiVib-equality builds on an ongoing project investigating the effects of rail traffic vibration on health. Area-level socioeconomic indicators will be added to this dataset for the present project.

A cross-sectional design will be used and analysis will apply a novel decomposition strategy to disentangle the health effects that can be attributed to a differential exposure and/or a differential susceptibility.

Project findings will expand the knowledge in the area and assist decision makers in setting priorities and targets for actions to reduce health inequality.