The sunday Times (London): This town had a healthy population. Then the bitcoin mine started humming, 2024, Samuel Lovett

Texas has been rejecting most forms of government regulation for a long time. The main problem here is that the operation is run out of cargo containers on an open field, something that would not be allowed anywhere. Data centers are often built underground, and when they're not they have very thick walls and multiple layers of insulation, both to reduce the noise but also as a security measure against intrusions. In most (all?) of Texas, there are no zoning restrictions, so someone can build a chemical plant right next to a neighborhood. So someone did that, and there's nothing that residents can do. Other than not voting for politicians who make this happen, of course, but that's long-term thinking.

It's long been known that excessive noise is bad for health. IMO this is a proper usage of the word 'stress', in the sense of excessive exertion demand that is highly unpleasant. This is how the term should matter medically. Being constantly bombarded by loud noise can never be good for health. Almost all this 'mindfulness' crap is really not about any of the weird mumbo-jumbo mystical pseudoscience surrounding it, rather it's simply the absence of stressors. Bodies have a limited energy store, something that seems entirely missing from modern medical thinking.

But I, too, assume that, if not Wessely, plenty of MDs will offer psycho-woowoo explanations that use the same basis of 'stress', but rather make it about, well, psycho-woowoo. There is never any end to this grift. It pleases the kind of people who want to make money by not being hindered by pesky regulations against such things as living in a healthy environment. They're playing the same role as the MDs who worked for tobacco companies. None of them ever faced any consequences, so that makes it an easy choice for people unhindered by such pesky things as a conscience, integrity or morality.

Then again many of those cases may have a different cause, may have little to do with it, but imperfect information can always be handled with perfected bullshit.

 

I don’t have the energy to look it up right now but I seem to remember reading about large studies controlled for various independent variables that found that chronic high noise exposure decreased life expectancy and increased suicidaloty.

 

Long-term residential road traffic noise and mortality in a Danish cohort, 2020, Thacher et al - "this study adds to the body of evidence linking exposure to road traffic noise with higher risk of mortality"

Transportation noise exposure and cardiovascular mortality: 15-years of follow-up in a nationwide prospective cohort in Switzerland, 2021, Vienneau et al - "Independent of air pollution, transportation noise exposure is associated with all and cause-specific CVD mortality, with effects starting below current guideline limits."

Road Traffic Noise Exposure and Depression/Anxiety: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2019, Dzambov et al - "Taking into account an overall quality assessment for the included studies, we conclude that there is evidence of 'very low' quality that increasing exposure to road traffic noise may be associated with depression and anxiety."

Traffic Noise and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2020, Hegelwald et al - "In conclusion, aircraft noise exposure increases the risk for depression. Otherwise, we did not detect statistically significant risk increases due to road and railway traffic noise or for anxiety."

Night noise exposure and risk of death by suicide in adults living in metropolitan areas, 2018, Min et al - "We found a significant association between exposure to nighttime noise and the risk of suicide death in adults in the Republic of Korea."

Noise and mental health: evidence, mechanisms, and consequences, 2024, Hahad et al - "Noise exposure likely has effects on mental health since the brain represents the primary target organ of noise-mediated effects. While the effects may seem minor when examining human studies, the public health implications are significant. This is evident in reports from the WHO and the EEA, which highlight that environmental stressors such as noise have substantial and continuous impacts on large segments of the population [1, 2]."