Jun 18, 2015 02:14 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that living in a bad or disadvantaged neighborhood adversely impacts mental and physical health.

Researchers found that people who live in neighborhoods with high crime, noise and vandalism are biologically more than a decade older than those who do not.

"Our team examined whether these environments also have a direct impact on cellular health," Mijung Park, lead author of the study, said in a statement. "We found that indeed, biological aging processes could be influenced by socioeconomic conditions."

For the study, researchers looked at telomeres, or stretches of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that shorten with every cell replication and are considered a strong measure of the aging process in cells, in nearly 3,000 Dutch individuals participating in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety.

After determining the quality of the neighborhoods in which they resided using measures of perceived neighborhood disorder, fear of crime and noise, researchers found that the telomeres of people reporting poor neighborhood quality were significantly shorter than telomeres of those who did not.

"The differences in telomere length between the two groups were comparable to 12 years in chronological age," Park said. "It's possible that their cells are chronically activated in response to psychological and physiological stresses created by disadvantaged socioeconomic, political and emotional circumstances."

The findings are detailed in the journal PLOS One. 

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