Impact of Noise on Health: The Divide Between Science and Policy; Open Journal of Social Sciences, May 12, 2017
Aline L. Bronzaft, professor emerita, City University of New York
Excerpts
…A visit to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) first page today does not list any reference to noise as an environmental pollutant. One has to click into several sections to access information on noise and its effects and in one of the sections accessed, noise pollution is linked to the Clean Air Act, as if the Noise Control Act never stood on its own. Further exploration of EPA’s interest in noise will yield a page that states that the Noise Control Act has not been rescinded; it is inactive. In other words, The United States passes laws but they don’t have to be enforced…
When one does find some information on the adverse effects of noise on health, the research and studies cited are not recent; thus, omitting research that more strongly linking noise to health effects that have been conducted in the past five years...
With the loss of the Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC) these past thirty plus years, citizens in the U.S., especially those exposed to aircraft noise, have had no federal agency to advocate lessening the noise in their communities. Although the Federal Aviation Administration oversaw aircraft noise, ONAC could provide pressure on this agency by statements, as noted above, that aircraft noise had an adverse impact on health. Noise continued to be a more pressing problem as the years passed and citizen groups were formed throughout the United States to combat this pollutant. Working with citizens in the New York region, Congresswoman Nita Lowey introduced a bill in the House of Representatives in 1997 to refund ONAC, as did Senator Robert Torrecelli in the Senate. While they were able to gather forty-five sponsors in the House and four in the Senate, their bills did not pass. Congresswoman Lowey attempted to introduce her legislation to refund ONAC in 1999 and 2005 but to no avail.
1.2. Noise: Still a Viable Pollutant
Today in 2017 the most vocal spokespersons for abating noise belong to these groups across the country who have been adversely impacted by intrusive noises, especially those living near airports. Several of these groups are calling for their Congresspersons to roll back the Federal Aviation Administration’s program aimed to improve air travel because the agency has not paid close enough attention to the noise incurred by restructuring the air routes. In 2016 Congresswoman Grace Meng of New York City, joined by several colleagues in other states, has introduced legislation, similar to that supported by the Congresswoman in 1997, to give the federal government a voice in lessening noise, especially that of aircraft. In the Senate, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand introduced a comparable bill. Congresspersons in Arizona, California, Florida, New York, etc. have introduced legislation to give local communities a greater role regarding flight paths because residents are being exposed to unacceptable levels of aviation noise. However, bills introduced by Congress people have to be voted on to become law and while citizen groups are hopeful that the federal government will eventually become concerned about noise impacts, in my opinion, the turmoil in Washington today casts doubt on that optimism.
2. Is Noise Really A Health Hazard?
Yet, the literature supporting the adverse effects of noise on mental and physical health has grown in the last fifteen years, underscoring the need to move ahead with federal noise legislation [8] [9] [10] . However, while there have been a few American papers, more of the research has taken place in Europe. Interestingly, the US Federal Aviation Administration Office of Environment and Energy funded a paper entitled “A Review of the Literature Related to Potential Health Effects of Aircraft Noise [11] ” in which its author Hales Swift states: “...there are also questions as to whether the results are directly transferable from a collection of European populations to an American one.” This statement is repeated a second time in this Review. While I understand that studies have to be replicated, I don’t believe that in our global society, we should wonder whether Americans respond differently to noise than do Europeans. Do we bring in comparisons amongst different nations when we discuss causes or treatments of diseases? Thus, with the United States hesitant to generalize noise impacts on health and well-being from European findings, this paper can safely conclude as follows:
“A great deal of research remains to be done in the field of health effects of noise.”
Thus, without additional research, the federal government might feel justified in taking it “slow” when it comes to noise abatement, especially with respect to airport-related noise.
To be fair to the Federal Aviation Administration, it did support the Correia, et al study [9] cited above which found “...a statistically significant association between exposure to aircraft noise and risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular diseases among older people living near airports.” The Transportation Research Board, a program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, devoted its September-October 2015 magazine (TRB, Number 299) to Public Health and Transportation. The first article by Dannenberg and Sener in that issue, “Why Public Health and Transportation: Setting the Stage [12] ,” states that “...noise can contribute to adverse health effects, including sleep disturbance, hearing loss, and decreased performance. “The article then suggests policies that could lessen impacts of noise on nearby populations: “...changing airport runway use patterns, flight path locations, and hours of operation.” With a study on six million older residents that found a relationship between aircraft noise and cardiovascular disease, and an article in a journal funded by state and federal agencies that acknowledges the harmful effects of noise on nearby populations, one could hope that in the near future United States policy decisions will be influenced by scientific findings on the deleterious effects of noise. So far, there has been a divide between research and policy in the United States when it comes to noise impacts. This statement is supported by a Hammer, et al. paper [13] which notes that while “...tens of millions of Americans suffer from a range of adverse health outcomes due to noise exposure,” there is not yet “... a national plan to reduce environmental noise pollution.”
7. Conclusion
…I, too, am astonished that I am still writing to urge people to lessen the din in their lives in order to protect their health. However, to be fair there are far more people today that support my views than there were forty years ago when I started to write about noise pollution.
Yet, will the outcry from citizens concerned about the deleterious effects of noise on health convince governments to pass policies to address noise pollution? Will public officials recognize that sound data already exist to justify passing and enforcing such policies? I will urge public officials to heed former Surgeon General William H. Stewart’s quote noted earlier.
“Must we wait until we prove every link in the chain of causation? I stand firmly with Surgeon General Burney’s statement of 10 years ago. In protecting health absolute proof comes late. To wait for it is to invite disaster or to prolong suffering unnecessarily.”