From Cars To Leaf Blowers: Noise Pollution's Toll On Human Health

This episode delves into the pervasive issue of noise pollution, highlighting its impact on health and the unique challenges it presents to urban environments.

1. Persistent noise pollution disproportionately affects marginalized communities.
2. Long-term exposure to noise can elevate stress hormones and increase the risk of heart disease.
3. The EPA has not updated noise regulations in decades, reflecting a lack of policy focus on this issue.
4. Local actions, such as ordinances banning gas-powered leaf blowers, can mitigate noise but are often insufficient without federal support.
5. Community activism is essential for advocating and implementing noise abatement measures.

1. The Pervasiveness of Noise

Joanne Silburner discusses the constant presence of noise in urban environments and its underappreciated health impacts. Joanne Silburner: "You might not notice your blood pressure going up when loud things are happening."

2. Legal and Policy Framework

The historical context of noise regulation and the current lack of federal initiative in managing noise pollution. Joanne Silburner: "It's written in the act, in the 1972 act, that EPA should be doing research, setting regulations."

3. Health Implications

Exploring the scientific findings relating to noise exposure and its correlation with various health issues. Joanne Silburner: "Studies definitely show an effect. Definite increases in heart disease, in heart failure, in stroke."

1. Learn about local noise ordinances and participate in community meetings to push for stricter regulations.
2. Advocate for electric appliances in residential and municipal maintenance to reduce noise from gas-powered equipment.
3. Support community groups like Quiet Communities that work towards lowering noise pollution.
4. Educate neighbors and local businesses about the impact of noise and encourage quieter operations.
5. Promote the installation of sound barriers where traffic noise is prevalent, especially near residential areas.

When's the last time you were in a place that was quiet — really quiet? No roadway noise, construction work or even the hum of a refrigerator. Our world is full of sounds, some of which are harming our health. The World Health Organization says "noise is an underestimated threat." Today, host Emily Kwong talks to health reporter Joanne Silberner about those health costs, what is too loud and some of the history of legislation to limit noise pollution in the United States.

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Joanne Silburner, Emily Kwong

Guest Name(s):

Joanne Silburner

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Emily Kwong
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

Joanne Celburner was living in Seattle when it started to get loud.

Joanne Silburner
I couldn't talk to you like this.

Unidentified Speaker
In the backyard and be heard.

Emily Kwong
When she moved to the area in 2010, the nearby highway had just been resurfaced.

Unidentified Speaker
But over time, the highway surface wears.

Joanne Silburner
Away and the sound of the tires.

Unidentified Speaker
On the roadway get louder and louder and louder.

Emily Kwong
Joanne was experiencing noise pollution, which is unwanted sound that over time can cause harm. She moved to Bainbridge island for some quiet, but as a longtime health reporter, she couldn't shake this growing concern about the impact of loud and persistent noises on human health.

Joanne Silburner
The noise pollution that I'm most concerned about is the everyday noise pollution of gas powered leaf blowers, of schools that.

Unidentified Speaker
Are right next to elevated train tracks.

Joanne Silburner
In New York City, of loud factories that are right next to where people are living, to highways that go through the middle of cities. A lot of it is invisible, or you're habituated to it and you don't.

Unidentified Speaker
Even know it's there.

Joanne Silburner
You might not notice your blood pressure going up when loud things are happening.

Unidentified Speaker
Or you might not notice that your.

Joanne Silburner
Stress hormones are higher, but they are.

Emily Kwong
And as with many health inequities, noise pollution affects people of color and poor communities disproportionately.

Joanne Silburner
When the interstate highway started being built.

Unidentified Speaker
They started running them through poorer neighborhoods.

Joanne Silburner
Who, you know, weren't as politically powerful enough to object.

Emily Kwong
This is where many of us are today, caught amid the hustle and bustle of a busy life, a soundtrack that, depending on where we live, may be hurting our health.

Case in the 4 July is often celebrated to the tune of booming fireworks. In 1972, there was a window of time when our sonic future could have been different, quieter.

Congress passed the Noise Control act the same year as the Clean Water act. The Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA set up the Office of Noise Abatement and Control to study the impact of noise on nearby populations. But it was closed less than a decade later, and noise pollution became the responsibility of state and local governments.

And then last year, an anti noise advocacy group decided to do something about this.

Joanne Silburner
There's a group called Quiet Communities, and they got together and filed a lawsuit.

Unidentified Speaker
Against the Environmental Protection Agency, saying, hey.

Joanne Silburner
You really need to sit up and.

Unidentified Speaker
Do what Congress told you to do. It's written in the act, in the.

Joanne Silburner
1972 act, that EPA should be doing.

Unidentified Speaker
Research, setting regulations, you know, understanding, monitoring and controlling noise pollution.

Emily Kwong
Even with this lawsuit, Joanne says the issue of noise pollution largely flies under the radar, seldom taken up by environmental groups.

Joanne Silburner
The only thing I can presume is.

Unidentified Speaker
That there were so many other battles.

Joanne Silburner
You know, with clean air and clean water, that just, this was just a battle that wasn't fought.

Emily Kwong
Today on the show, what the research says about the costs of noise pollution, how loud is too loud? And when does noise start affecting our health? I'm Emily Kwong. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Emily Kwong
Dot okay, Joanne, we're going to talk about noise itself. You write that there are two factors that pose a health risk to people. It's exposure times.

Unidentified Speaker
So, like how long and persistently you're hearing noise, that train that goes by.

Emily Kwong
When you're asleep at night, and also decibel levels.

Unidentified Speaker
But that's kind of measured in terms.

Emily Kwong
Of something called a weighted decibel. What's a weighted decibel and what are different weighted decibels?

Joanne Silburner
Weighted decibel looks at the effect on the ear, not just the loudness, but what is more audible to the human ear, and it gives extra weight to that. So the less audible ends of that spectrum don't factor into that number. So you've got a 20 deciba as a whisper in a quiet room, 85 dba louder than an alarm clock, softer than a lawnmower 110 dba is the rock concert or a jackhammer.

And when you look at it in terms of time, the very loud noises, very short amount of time to do physical damage to the ear, the softer noises, when we're talking about, you know, being near the louder washing machine, that kind of noise that's not physically damaging to the ear, but it is going to have the effect of raising blood pressure, raising stress hormones, things like that.

Unidentified Speaker
What's worse, a really loud noise that you hear every so often or a pretty loud noise that's like, constant in your life?

Joanne Silburner
It depends on what you're worried about.

The loud noise, the rock concert, the jackhammer, that's deafness.

The softer noises are blood pressure, cortisol, stress hormone levels, things like that.

Emily Kwong
In terms of health concerns.

Unidentified Speaker
Right.

Emily Kwong
Okay, so what happens if a person.

Unidentified Speaker
Is exposed to loud noise for a long period of time?

Unidentified Speaker
Well, studies have shown increases in stress.

Joanne Silburner
Hormones, ultimately increases in heart disease and diabetes, definite problems in sleep. You know, the slightly louder side of the spectrum wakes you up. You might not know it. And sleep disturbances are related to an awful lot of illnesses that I think are. It's underappreciated diabetes, for one.

Emily Kwong
And you wrote about all of this in a piece for Undark magazine and NPR's shots blog. You noted there was a recently published review by european researchers looking at studies on transportation, noise and cardiovascular health. What was their summary?

Joanne Silburner
Their summary says that studies definitely show an effect.

Definite increases in heart disease, in heart failure, in stroke.

And the numbers weren't huge.

Unidentified Speaker
In terms of the increased risks, I.

Joanne Silburner
Think it was like three or 5% in that level, which in a lot of studies, you see numbers that small and you think, oh, no big deal.

Unidentified Speaker
But those diseases are so common.

If you're talking about a 3% increase.

Joanne Silburner
In something that almost never happens, you're only talking about a few people. If you're talking about a 3% increase in something like heart disease or heart.

Unidentified Speaker
Failure or stroke, that's very common. You're talking big numbers.

Joanne Silburner
And in fact, there is a conclusion the World Health Organization came to some years ago when they looked at traffic related noise just in western Europe, and they added up, what does this do? They found that it took away 1.6 million healthy life. Years were gone, were taken away by transportation, caused increases in cardiovascular disease and similar problems. So 1.6 million years of life lost.

Unidentified Speaker
In west Europe alone in one year from traffic noise.

Emily Kwong
That is just a shocking finding.

And earlier, you know, we talked about the Noise Control act that was passed in 1972.

You note that the EPA hasn't suggested new noise limits in decades.

What did they propose back then?

Joanne Silburner
They proposed a daytime average of 45.

Unidentified Speaker
Decibels indoors and 55 decibels outdoors.

Joanne Silburner
Now, for reference, a refrigerator hum would be about 40 decibels normal conversation, or a room air conditioner would be about 60 decibels somewhere a little bit higher than listening to a refrigerator home for 24 hours. That would be their limit. And a little bit quieter than an air conditioner in a house, averaged over 24 hours. And when you think about your life.

Unidentified Speaker
You know, there you do have quiet.

Joanne Silburner
Times, a lot of quiet times, but you've got noisy times, too. So you've got to think about the average.

Unidentified Speaker
This level of noise sounds incredibly serene and just wonderful, really.

Emily Kwong
Did the EPA say how they would.

Unidentified Speaker
Even go about enforcing that? I mean, ensuring that transportation noise was no louder than an air conditioner for someone living nearby?

Joanne Silburner
They did not at that time, that I know of. But if you go to european cities, a lot of them are a lot quieter. And if you go to, in some cities here, the retaining walls that not only block the view of the highway, they block the sound of the highway. That's doable.

Unidentified Speaker
So you can resurface highways. That quiets things down. You can build sound barriers.

Joanne Silburner
You can have quieter cars.

Unidentified Speaker
There are ways.

Joanne Silburner
There are lots and lots and lots.

Unidentified Speaker
Of ways to make things quieter.

Unidentified Speaker
Yeah. Okay, so flash forward to now. It's 2024. We live in the world with the noise we do.

What can people do as they're hearing you and I talk about this, if they're concerned about noise in their neighborhood.

Joanne Silburner
You can get ordinances passed.

Unidentified Speaker
And people have done this in individual.

Joanne Silburner
Communities through community activism.

Unidentified Speaker
And quiet communities is actually an interesting.

Joanne Silburner
Place to go to because they think they. They help people organize or answer questions about what can you do in your own community in terms of getting rules passed saying replace gas powered lawnmowers and blowers with electric ones? You can do things like that on a bigger level. If you've got highways, I think it's going to take a different level of activism to get them taken care of. So getting involved in letting your politicians know you want something done, you know, I guess what I'm saying here is.

Unidentified Speaker
There really are things you can do.

Unidentified Speaker
Like why now would the kind of.

Emily Kwong
The wishes of the people who made.

Unidentified Speaker
This law all those years ago come true?

Joanne Silburner
No reason at all, except, you know, there is a little bit more information on the health effects than. There's certainly more information on the health effects. So you have more ammunition if you're trying to make a change, and I.

Unidentified Speaker
Mean, right here in DC since 2022, there's been a ban on gas powered leaf blowers, and this is a noise.

Emily Kwong
Ban passed on the local level.

Unidentified Speaker
Do you think local measures like this are enough, though?

Unidentified Speaker
No.

Joanne Silburner
Personally, no, I don't. It takes a lot of effort and sophistication and knowledge to understand what needs.

Unidentified Speaker
To be done and what should be done.

Joanne Silburner
And, you know, there are a lot of other problems going on in the world. And people look and they say, well, wait a minute, we've got a lot of crime. We need more money here in our water.

We may have problems there. So I personally think it is going to take a federal effort to really make a difference. If you're lucky enough to live in a community where you've got people who are involved enough and who can affect a change, then you're in good shape. But I don't think most of us are.

Emily Kwong
There's so much more we could talk about because I'm now thinking about the.

Unidentified Speaker
Trade offs between other, I'll just call.

Emily Kwong
Them amenities, but transportation, infrastructure.

Unidentified Speaker
People demand they want their cardinal like.

Emily Kwong
All of this has come about from stuff we want, too.

Joanne Silburner
My answer to that would be it is doable.

Other cities have done this in other countries, rural areas. You know, there are things that can be done to keep noise within factories or other places to contain that noise. It is doable.

We haven't done it doesn't mean it can't be done.

Unidentified Speaker
Joanne Silburner, thank you for writing this piece and raising the profile of this public health issue.

Joanne Silburner
Thank you for talking to me.

Emily Kwong
Joanne Silburner wrote about noise pollution for Undark magazine and NPR. We'll link to her story in our episode notes.

This episode was produced by Burley McCoy and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Burley and Rebecca. The audio engineer was Kwesi Lee. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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