Biomedical subjects
J Head
Publications and source records attributed to J Head.
A toy library service for handicapped children.
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Proceedings: The immunologic significance of the mammary gland.
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Bronchogenic carcinoma in situ in asymptomatic high-risk population of smokers.
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Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study.
BACKGROUND: Exposure to environmental stressors can impair children's health and their cognitive development. The effects of air pollution, lead, and chemicals have been studied, but there has been less emphasis on the effects of noise. Our aim, therefore, was to assess the effect of exposure to aircraft and road traffic noise on cognitive performance and health in children. METHODS: We did a cross-national, cross-sectional study in which we assessed 2844 of 3207 children aged 9-10 years who were attending 89 schools of 77 approached in the Netherlands, 27 in Spain, and 30 in the UK located in local authority areas around three major airports. We selected children by extent of exposure to external aircraft and road traffic noise at school as predicted from noise contour maps, modelling, and on-site measurements, and matched schools within countries for socioeconomic status. We measured cognitive and health outcomes with standardised tests and questionnaires administered in the classroom. We also used a questionnaire to obtain information from parents about socioeconomic status, their education, and ethnic origin. FINDINGS: We identified linear exposure-effect associations between exposure to chronic aircraft noise and impairment of reading comprehension (p=0.0097) and recognition memory (p=0.0141), and a non-linear association with annoyance (p<0.0001) maintained after adjustment for mother's education, socioeconomic status, longstanding illness, and extent of classroom insulation against noise. Exposure to road traffic noise was linearly associated with increases in episodic memory (conceptual recall: p=0.0066; information recall: p=0.0489), but also with annoyance (p=0.0047). Neither aircraft noise nor traffic noise affected sustained attention, self-reported health, or overall mental health. INTERPRETATION: Our findings indicate that a chronic environmental stressor-aircraft noise-could impair cognitive development in children, specifically reading comprehension. Schools exposed to high levels of aircraft noise are not healthy educational environments.
Short-term disability, sickness absence, and social gradients in the Whitehall II Study.
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Childhood housing experiences and school attainment.
The housing conditions of children in the National Child Development Study are related both to 16-year school attainment and also to progress through secondary school from 11 to 16. Children in homes which are crowded or lacking amenities, or in council homes at sixteen have relatively low scores on tests of reading and mathematics at the same age. The relationship between 16-year attainment and housing conditions is shown to be similar whether the child experienced the unsatisfactory housing at the age of 7, 11 or 16. Crowding and amenities are shown to be slightly associated with progress through the secondary school, although tenure is more strongly associated. The overall conclusions from this study are that children who have ever lived in unsatisfactory housing perform relatively poorly at school when they are 16, but no evidence emerged that there is any particular age at which housing circumstances are crucial for eventual school attainment. Consideration is also given to the importance of the wider environment in which the child lives.
Children's housing and their health and physical development.
The housing conditions of children in the National Child Development Study were related to their health and their height at the age of 16. Although children in crowded homes missed more school for medical reasons, the only illness they reported more often than children in better conditions was bronchitis. Those with inadequate amenities did not miss more school, although they also reported more bronchitis, as well as bilious attacks. Children in council houses were shorter than those in owner-occupied homes, but the only difference in height related to the conditions of the home was that crowded boys were slightly shorter than those who were not crowded. There was therefore little evidence of an association between poor housing and either ill-health or retarded growth among Britain's 16-year-olds in the 1970s, and this was still the case for children who had spent longer periods of their childhood in unsatisfactory housing.
Self-funding for employee health plans.
In today's environment of increasing pressures to contain costs, hospital management is faced with the need to identify all potential areas of cost savings. Self-funding of employee health care benefits appears to be one such area: this approach should enable the hospital to control its health plan and allow cash flow to work to its advantage. Further advantages may accrue to the hospital which elects to self-fund its employee health plan should a group of hospitals purchase reinsurance together. SCHA members have enjoyed similar advantages through pooled arrangements in purchasing other employee benefit plans. A series of regional meetings conducted during the fall of 1980 provided a forum for discussion of self-funding alternatives by administrators, chief financial officers, and personnel directors. As a result of these meetings, hospital management is better equipped to monitor, evaluate, and consider alternatives to their present employee health plans. And SCHA, through its committee structure, is continuing to explore self-funding of employee health care benefits as a potential area of cost savings.
Children's cognition and aircraft noise exposure at home--the West London Schools Study.
The association of aircraft noise exposure with cognitive performance was examined by means of a cross-sectional field survey. Two hundred thirty six children attending 10 primary schools around Heathrow Airport in west London were tested on reading comprehension, immediate/delayed recall and sustained attention. In order to obtain the information about their background, a questionnaire was delivered to the parents and 163 answers were collected. Logistic regression models were used to assess performance on the cognitive tests in relation to aircraft noise exposure at home and possible individual and school level confounding factors. A significant dose-response relationship was found between aircraft noise exposure at home and performance on memory tests of immediate/delayed recall. However there was no strong association with the other cognitive outcomes. These results suggest that aircraft noise exposure at home may affect children's memory.
Reply to Jack E. Riggs' "Deprenyl, excess mortality, and epidemiological traps". Parkinson's Disease Research Group of the United Kingdom.
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