There are plenty of reasons for that belly fat of yours—but who knew noisy roads could be one of them?

One of the many reasons people move to the city is for its charming combination of constant activity, weird smells, and crabby drivers. (Kidding. Sort of.) Traffic noise, while annoying, is admittedly one of the most appealing parts of the city life equation: It’s the ultimate definition of going places, both literally and in the broader, more ambitious sense.

That said, it could also be doing a number on your health. Two recent unrelated studies have revealed exposure to traffic noise could be linked to increased belly fat, risk of stroke, and shortened lifespan.

The first study, published in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, found that chronic exposure to the traffic trifecta—road, rail, and aircraft noise—may contribute to increased belly fat. Researchers analyzed government data to determine how much traffic noise 5,075 people living in Stockholm, Sweden, had been exposed to since 1999.

Researchers found that almost 70 percent of Stockholm residents were regularly exposed to traffic noise above 45 decibels. (According to the World Health Organization, any noise above 40 decibels is considered a health risk.) Over half had been exposed to one source of traffic noise, 15 percent to two sources, and 2 percent were exposed to all three.

While scientists didn’t find a link between traffic noise and overall BMI, they did notice a link between noise levels and increased risk of belly fat. More specifically, a 0.21 cm increase in waist size for every 5 decibel increase in road traffic noise exposure. What’s worse, belly fat risk rose from 25 percent among those exposed to one traffic source, and nearly doubled among those exposed to all three.

The study’s strictly observational, but researchers suggest the constant noise exposure could cause sleep disturbances, which may then lead to appetite, energy, metabolic, and cardiovascular issues. The added stress could also increase the body’s production of cortisol (the stress hormone), another factor thought to play a part in increased belly fat.

The second study, published in the European Heart Journal, analyzed data on 8.6 million people living in London between 2003 and 2010. It looked at road traffic noise levels—both during the day and at night—throughout different postal codes, and compared the data to deaths and hospital admissions in each area for adults and the elderly.

When daytime road traffic noise was more than 60 decibels, deaths were 4 percent more common among adults and the elderly than in areas where traffic noise was less than 55 decibels. Researchers feel the deaths are most likely linked to cardiovascular disease, due to increased blood pressure, sleep problems, and chronic stress from the noise.

Adults living in the noisiest areas were also 5 percent more likely to be admitted to the hospital for stroke, compared to adults living in quieter areas (this number went up to 9 percent in the elderly). Meanwhile, nighttime traffic was linked to a 5 percent increase of stroke risk in the elderly.

Being that every individual is built differently, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how the noise impacts each person specifically, but study authors feel the work raises important questions about urban noise that should be investigated further. (It might be time to invest in those noise-cancelling headphones you’ve had your eye on.)

How do you deal with the crazy amount of noise pollution?

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City woman image via Shutterstock

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The teams of relief workers currently working in the Gulf may face a host of oil-related health problems. Studies show that people who have prolonged contact with oil and oil products may experience negative physical and psychological side effects.

Oil spill clean-up brings workers and volunteers into close contact with chemicals that are known to be hazardous to human health. As we deal with the oil spill in the Gulf, it helps to brush up on history.

For the rest of the summary, check out the full-length article at Grist.org.

Editor’s note: Article by Gina Solomon. Originally published by our friends at Grist.org. Grist is a media organization that has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a humorous twist since 1999. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Grist on Twitter, too!

Image: Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army

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Blame Thomas Edison (or Heinrich Göbel if you must split hairs). Ever since the invention of the lightbulb, humans have stopped spending the hours after sunset huddled in bed, terrified of marauders and werewolves and bad night air. Instead we’ve been tripping the artificial light fantastic – staying late at work, going out to movie theaters, nightclubs, and bars, and obsessively checking Facebook. As a result, the average night’s sleep for Westerners has gone from roughly nine hours to seven over the past hundred years.

And that’s why you’re going to die, at least according to a series of studies recently published in academic journal Sleep. The combined studies were culled from Europe, Asia, and North America and monitored more than one-and-a-half million subjects. Turns out sleeping less than six hours a night increases your chance of premature death by 12 percent.

No problem, you say? You’ll just chug half a bottle of Nyquil and up the shut-eye quotient? Well, that’ll kill you just as dead, according to some more science. The body’s natural response to the flow of night and day – the circadian rhythm – has been evolutionarily been fine-tuned over millions of years. When the sun goes down and the body stops receiving external light, it starts producing melatonin (a sleep-inducing chemical), turns off responses to stress, and performs other healing tasks.

One of the more prominent links to poor sleep habits is constant exposure to blue LEDs. You know, laptops, TVs, iPads; those little gadgets grafted onto your skin throughout the day. Traitors! I always knew that my computer would kill me one day – I just hoped it would be in an epic, 2001-style outer-space-showdown, not a coward’s attack while I’m sleepy and defenseless.

Image: Alyssa L. Miller

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America runs on coal. It creates half of our electricity. And the unclean technology producing this source may be killing our children, grandchildren and the future unborn, not to mention our natural environment.

Is the fed sensing the urgency to limit the damage from this source we depend upon?

Not according to three environmental groups looking for clean coal technology. They are planning to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for being blatantly lax in limiting toxic discharges from power plants that threaten the health of local communities exposed daily to the pollutants.

According to Planet Shifter, the federal government is 26 years behind setting restrictions on the discharges which contaminate ground and surface waters and threaten aquatic life. Apparently, the EPA should have limited coal ash discharges to meet its own requirements for annual environmental reviews.

Back in December when a coal ash spill occurred at the Tennessee Kingston Fossil Plant, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson promised to issue regulations by the end of the year for nearly 600 coal plants with on-site coal ash storage ponds or landfills.

But the three groups planning to sue: the Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project argue “the EPA need to stop kicking the can down the road and set a date for the regulation.”

There is evidence that these coal plants discharge millions of pounds of toxic pollutants every year. According to the report, in  Kingston, alone, more than 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled from a coal-ash holding pond last December when a earthen wall ruptured. The ash contains elevated levels of arsenic, selenium and lead, among other toxic substances.

In a 60 Minutes investigation on harmful waste by-products from coal, it was revealed that the tremendous amount we burn for electricity every year generates 130 million tons of waste. They even interviewed coal barons who have become rich off coal, who admitted being responsible for those smoke stacks that pump out 100-million tons of carbon dioxide every year.

Most of the waste emitted from power stations  is coal ash which is dangerous to humans and other living things. Environmental scientists tell us that the concentrations of mercury, arsenic, lead and other toxic metals are considerably higher in coal ash than in ordinary soil.

When properly disposed of  in dry, lined impoundments, coal ash is considered to be safe. But observers say it is often dumped into wet ponds (nearly 500 of them in the U.S.)  and in those cases the ash could pose health risks to the nearby communities.

Images: Tennessee Valley Authority, Earth Observatory, NASA

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