Dr. Arline Bronzaft on the Adverse Health Impacts of Noise

Dr. Bronzaft's BIO

Arline Bronzaft, PhD, is a professor emerita of Lehman College, City University of New York and an expert on the health and mental health effects of noise. She has been a researcher and advocate on the topic for more than 5 decades, has served as an advisor to five New York City mayors as the chairperson of the noise committee of GrowNYC.org, coauthored the 2011 book Why Noise Matters and is frequently quoted in the media on the effects of noise. Bronzaft was awarded a 2018 presidential citation from APA for her work as a Citizen Psychologist.

On the Difference Between Sound and Noise

We know sound is a physical phenomenon and it goes through our ears and it gets to our brain and we identify the sound. That's sound. But when you talk about noise, you're talking about sounds that are unwanted, intrusive, bothersome, disturbing. And now because of literature as you cited linking noise to adverse mental and health effects, we now say that noise is an environmental pollutant. And let me add that noise doesn't have to be loud to be that disturbing. Picture yourself trying to fall asleep next to a bathroom with a dripping faucet—that's not loud. Or my daughter trying to study in her bedroom and the person above playing music, which she didn't like by the way. But the point was the music wasn't that loud, but it disturbed her. And that's the difference between sound and noise.

Noise and Adverse Physical and Mental Health Impacts

Studies have now linked noise to cardiovascular disorders so that if people are living with aircraft noise—and you can't imagine unless you're exposed to it, how awful that is—they are at an increased risk of entering hospitals with cardiovascular disturbances. Sleep loss has been linked in studies to noise. Sleep is essential for good health. So the literature is confirming this. I'm actually working with a professor at Columbia who'll be shortly doing a study on the effects of community noise on sleep of people living in that community. So the studies are there, they've been replicated. They have found that noise is harmful to health.

But now let's take mental health. I wish you would be in my home when I get a call from someone who has a noise problem, the anguish, the distress, the unhappiness, the frustration of not having this being resolved, having been exposed to neighbor noise maybe 5, 6 years, having been exposed to noise coming from a venue in the neighborhood. Those are psychological effects, distress, disturbance. Now while the stress which comes with stress and disturbance can lead to physiological disorders, the mental discomfort and anguish and unhappiness has been identified throughout the world.

And let me add this—you may not yet have become ill. Your blood pressure may not have yet risen to a point where you need medication, but you know what? You are not living a decent quality of life. Quality of life is important. It's not just enough to be alive. My daughter who lives in Queens with aircraft noise cannot enjoy her backyard. Wow. COVID came and what a comfort that was. No planes, birds singing and being viewed as she sat and enjoyed her backyard. I think people are entitled to quiet in their homes and hopefully they will not develop more serious symptoms. But when they're being imposed upon by hazardous noise pollutants, they are missing out on living a decent quality of life.

Now, let's talk about getting accustomed to a sound. That requires work, that requires stress on your system and that will cause an adverse effect. And I'm going to give you another term that comes up: learned helplessness, a psychological term where a person feels, no matter what I do, nothing is going to change. I cannot make another phone call to my legislator's assistant. I can't talk to my neighbor again. I have to learn to live with it. Living with noise is stress. It takes work to try to cancel out the sounds and go on with your life, and that is costly to your health.

Failure of Government to Address Noise Pollution

What about the federal government? What have they done about noise? Zero, in my estimation. However, if we go back and you're going to have to come up with the president, there was a president that set up the Environmental Protection Agency that gave us the Noise Control Act, that gave us the Clean Air Act—President Richard Nixon— not only did he set up EPA, he put an excellent person in charge of EPA. EPA was coming out with literature on how harmful noise is to health.

In fact, their literature in late '70s said, "Noise: a health problem." Look how advanced we were in the late '70s, and they were handing out brochures and they came to cities and talked to people. And then Ronald Reagan was elected president. He essentially shut down the noise arm in the EPA. But there were a number of presidents after Ronald Reagan. They could have refunded it. The Bushes could have refunded it, right? We could have—Clinton could, Obama could, and Biden could certainly refund the noise office. There's legislation introduced in Congress. But they've been doing this for years to try to get funding. But we haven't had an executive order that says, Hey, this is a serious problem. Let's get back to what we were doing in the 1970s. And if you come to my home, I can show you their brochures, their pamphlets, and you'd see how active the U.S. was. No longer.

Societal and Economic Costs of Noise Pollution

If studies show that exposure to aircraft noise increases your risk of going to a hospital for a cardiovascular disorder—that's going to cost money. When you allow noise to prevail, it's costly. So even though the airlines say, oh, if we make changes—and they are exploring changes, let me tell you that they are—that could be costly. What's more costly than medical health in this country? I think the military may beat it, but when you do not take care of a noise problem, like the children who were years behind in reading, how much would it have cost to try to improve their reading scores? They were nearly a year behind. If you don't lessen noise pollution, it will cost this country in terms of dollars. And I want that factored in when the FAA's approached to provide quieter aircraft and quieter routes.