Occupational and environmental noise exposure during pregnancy and rare health outcomes of offspring: A scoping review focusing on congenital anomalies and perinatal mortality

Abstract

As environmental and occupational noise can be health hazards, recent studies have investigated the effects of noise exposure during pregnancy. Despite biological plausibility and animal studies supporting an association, studies focusing on congenital anomalies and perinatal mortality as outcomes of noise exposure are still scarce. We performed a scoping review to collect, summarise, and discuss the existing scientific research about the relationships between noise exposure during pregnancy and congenital anomalies and/or perinatal mortality. We searched electronic databases for papers published between 1970 and March 2021. We included 16 studies (seven on congenital anomalies, three on perinatal mortality, and two on both congenital anomalies and perinatal mortality). We assessed four studies on congenital hearing dysfunction as the definition of congenital anomalies includes functional anomalies. We found few studies on this topic and no studies on the combined effects of occupational and environmental noise exposures. Evidence suggests a small increase in the risk of congenital anomalies in relation to occupational and to a lesser extent environmental noise exposure. In addition, few studies investigated perinatal mortality and the ones that did, used different outcome definitions, so no conclusions could be made. However, a recent big cross-sectional study demonstrated an association between road traffic noise and stillbirth. A few studies suggest a possible association between congenital hearing dysfunction and occupational noise exposure during pregnancy. Future studies with larger samples, better exposure assessments, and better statistical modelling strategies are needed to investigate these relationships further.