Zhong et al. Respond to “There’s No Place Like Home”

We appreciate the comments by Hauptman et al. (1) highlighting the challenges in understanding how environmental exposures and their inequities contribute to sleep disruptions. The recent interest in how sleep, and the lack thereof, affects human health has led several large cohort studies, such as the California Teachers Study, to include such questions in follow-up questionnaires. We agree with Hauptman et al. that racial equity issues indeed require further interrogation than present in our study (2); even in in our cohort, non-Hispanic White participants experienced lower levels of artificial light at night (ALAN), noise, and air pollution and higher levels of green space compared with the rest of the cohort (Table 1). Diverse populations are required to further understand how the role that social and racial disparities affect levels of light, green space, noise, and air pollution and subsequent health effects.
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research