Table 3.

Associations between categories combining residential exposure to road traffic at the most and least exposed façade and risk of incident tinnitus (40,692 cases, including both primary and secondary tinnitus diagnoses). Results were derived from cox proportional hazards models.

	Road traffic noise, ${\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{x}$
Road traffic noise, ${\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}$	$<55\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$	55–60 dB	$\ge 60\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$
$<40\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{6,213}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{1,477}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{1,461}$
	Ref	0.99 (0.94, 1.05)	0.97 (0.92, 1.03)
40–50 dB	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{11,205}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{4,797}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{6,400}$
	1.03 (1.00, 1.07)	1.02 (0.98, 1.06)	1.05 (1.01, 1.09)
$\ge 50\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{1,425}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{3,184}$	$n\text{\hspace{0.17em}cases}=\mathrm{4,530}$
	1.04 (0.98, 1.10)	1.07 (1.03, 1.12)	1.08 (1.03, 1.12)

Note: Results are given in hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) and were based on the fully adjusted model, i.e., adjusted for age (underlying time scale), railway noise, sex, calendar year, civil status, income, country of origin, occupational status, education, proportion of high-quality green areas within 150 and $\mathrm{1,000}\mathrm{m}$ buffers, and a number of area-level socioeconomic variables: percentage of population with low income, with only basic education, who are unemployed, with manual labor, who are single-parent and with a criminal record. All covariates, apart from sex and region of origin, were included in the model as time-varying variables. dB, decibel; Ref, reference.