An exploratory spatial analysis to assess the relationship between deprivation, noise and infant mortality: an ecological study.

Background: Few studies have explored how noise might contribute to social health inequalities, and even fewer have considered infant mortality or its risk factors as the health event of interest.In this paper, we investigate the impact of neighbourhood characteristics - both socio-economic status and ambient noise levels - on the spatial distribution of infant mortality in the Lyon metropolitan area, in France.

Methods: All infant deaths (n = 715) occurring between 2000 and 2009 were geocoded at census block level.