The Forgotten Art of Shutting Up
A construction crew works to install a noise wall near a highway in Seattle. Photo courtesy of Washington State Department of Transportation.
On June 7, 2023, antinoise nonprofit Quiet Communities, Inc. sued the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to protect the public from the harms of noise exposure as mandated by the Noise Control Act of 1972. This ongoing lawsuit represents the culmination of numerous efforts by Quiet Communities to revive the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC), which Congress stopped funding in 1982, and bring the issue of noise pollution to the forefront of public attention. If the US District Court for the District of Columbia rules in favor of the nonprofit, the case stands to usher in a series of long-overdue improvements to US public health policy regarding noise.
The harmful effects of noise pollution, which the EPA defines as “unwanted or disturbing sound,” are well-documented, with nearly 1,850 peer-reviewed scientific articles worldwide chronicling its detrimental impacts since 1982. In 2022, the United Nations deemed urban noise pollution a “growing hazard to public health,” which endangers at least 100 million people in the United States and one in five European Union citizens. According to World Health Organization estimates, noise pollution contributes to 12,000 premature deaths and the overall loss of one million years of healthy life per year in the EU alone. As Peter James, assistant professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, explains in a 2023 Kaiser Health News article, noise overload triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response, elevating stress hormones and, as a result, worsening health outcomes. Excessive noise exposure, for example, increases chronic stress levels, exacerbates mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, worsens one’s susceptibility to ischemic heart disease, and heightens diabetes risk.
In addition to its health effects, excessive noise exposure can also affect cognitive performance. It negatively impacts human cognition and, in particular, hampers children’s working memory and attention span. These findings are in keeping with conventional wisdom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, it was common knowledge that being in a noisy environment could lower the quality of online learning.
Most alarmingly, marginalized communities disproportionately suffer the consequences of noise pollution. In both rural and urban areas of the US, neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and proportions of racial minority residents experience higher levels of noise than other neighborhoods. A 2017 study found that neighborhoods with median annual household incomes below $25,000 were around two decibels louder than neighborhoods with incomes above $100,000 and that median nighttime noise levels were around four decibels louder in communities that are at least 75% Black than in communities with no Black residents. Similarly, a 2023 study uncovered that the most redlined (Class D) neighborhoods experienced 17% higher maximum noise levels than Class A ones. Dr. Paul Mohai of the University of Michigan and Robin Saha of the University of Montana hypothesize that hazardous and noisy sites like highways, railroads, airports, and factories are disproportionately built near minority and low-income neighborhoods because the residents of these neighborhoods often have fewer economic and political resources with which to oppose this construction. Alternatively, Dr. Peter Preisendörfer of Johannes Gutenberg University and his colleagues argue that disparities in detrimental noise exposure arise from “housing attributes.” That is, well-off households are better able to afford dwellings that shield them from noise more effectively.
Despite strong evidence of the dangers of noise pollution, US regulators have largely relegated noise pollution to the back burner for the past four decades. In 1970, under Title IV of the Clean Air Act, the EPA created its Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC), whose initial work led Congress to pass the Noise Control Act of 1972 and the Quiet Communities Act of 1978. These acts direct the EPA to reduce noise and support state and local governments in doing the same. In particular, the Noise Control Act requires the EPA to coordinate the programs of all federal agencies relating to noise control, disseminate information and educational materials on the public health impacts of noise, and create a system for certifying products as “Low-Noise-Emission,” among many other things. The Quiet Communities Act amends the Noise Control Act to stipulate that the EPA must finance research projects on noise and provide grants and technical assistance to state and local governments for the purpose of noise control. The ONAC completed substantial work throughout the 1970s, which included conducting research, coordinating with regulators, and publishing a guide on safe noise levels. However, in 1982, just as it was planning to introduce additional regulations on loud construction tools, the Reagan administration stopped funding the office. Although Congress never actually repealed the Noise Control Act or the Quiet Communities Act, both remain “essentially unfunded” to this day.
In theory, this process of defunding was meant to assign state and local governments a greater share of the responsibility to regulate noise. In practice, governments at all levels have all but abandoned this responsibility. The EPA has not promulgated any new federal noise regulations or standards since 1986, drawing the issue of noise pollution away from the public eye and leaving lower-level governments with no guidance regarding drafting noise regulations. Without the requisite federal infrastructure, states have been slow to legislate against the issue—and where state-level regulations do exist, they lack consistency. As the American Public Health Association contends, nationwide tools like health impact assessments and environmental screens are important for drafting equitable antinoise regulations. However, the EPA’s environmental justice mapping tool does not include noise as an indicator. In this way, the EPA’s silence on noise has inhibited the abilities of lower-level governments’ to produce well-informed regulations and their capacities to enforce the sparse regulations they have implemented. A crucial requirement in the Quiet Communities Act was that the EPA give “grants to States, local governments, and authorized regional planning agencies” to enforce noise control programs. Defunding the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control has, by extension, defunded state and local equivalents. Thus, even where noise regulations exist, they are often not adequately enforced. Take, for example, New York City: its noise code prohibits drivers from honking when there is no “imminent danger,” but this rule is seldom respected.
At the same time, the current situation has made it unnecessarily difficult for researchers based in the US to study noise. To illustrate, in 2015, researchers from the University of Michigan conducted a study on the relationship between noise pollution and high blood pressure. They were limited because the national-level US noise data they used was from 1981, the last time the EPA estimated noise exposure. More generally, the dearth of government funding and general awareness about environmental noise exposure has downgraded the subject as a research priority. Together, these factors have intensified the issue of governments at various levels lacking information that could be useful for rolling out effective antinoise legislation.
As with noise pollution itself, efforts to combat noise pollution have often left the most vulnerable communities behind. For example, since 1997, the Federal Aviation Administration and Los Angeles World Airports have given the city of Inglewood, California nearly $400 million to protect its residents from air traffic-driven noise pollution. Inglewood used a disproportionate amount of that money to soundproof middle-class homes far from the airport, including 800 homes outside the area marked as experiencing significant annoyance from noise. Meanwhile, the city neglected to soundproof 1,200 homes and apartments in a “struggling neighborhood” nearer to the airport. This situation in Inglewood sheds light on how socioeconomic advantage can literally insulate some communities from the detriments of noise exposure while others bear the brunt of the consequences. Noise pollution is, thus, a critical yet overlooked component of the broader issue of environmental inequality.
The current dispute between Quiet Communities, Inc. and the EPA presents a historic opportunity to revitalize the Office of Noise Abatement and Control and curb noise pollution. If Quiet Communities succeeds, the EPA will have to perform its nondiscretionary duties outlined in the Noise Control Act. These include conducting research on the links between noise and public health, producing reports identifying major sources of noise, publishing proposed regulations, labeling products that cause or mitigate noise-related harm, informing the public, supporting state and local governments’ noise control efforts, and coordinating federal agencies’ noise control programs. In concrete terms, there are myriad short- and long-term policy fixes that, with the ONAC’s scholarly and financial support, would help curb noise pollution. Chiefly, these fixes entail investing in and promoting technologies such as quiet asphalt roads and noise barriers, which reduce road traffic noise, and electric vehicles, which boast quieter motors. They also entail implementing and enforcing more regulations surrounding noise usage. Paris, Brussels, and Antwerp, for example, have established speed limits to tackle street noise, and, as the case of Inglewood demonstrates, the EPA should allocate more funding toward soundproofing homes, especially those with the highest levels of noise exposure. These fixes may seem costly, but the human cost of inaction—tens of millions of US residents living at risk of noise-related health effects—is heavier. Plus, the goal is not to completely eliminate noise but to reduce unwanted and excessive noises, which disproportionately harm marginalized communities, while crafting pleasant urban soundscapes that promote well-being.
In the longer run, and where resources endure, a revitalized ONAC could draw inspiration from policies proposed by researchers or successfully implemented elsewhere, many of which involve shifts in urban planning and zoning priorities so that future factories, train tracks, and airports are built further away from residential homes. Barcelona, for instance, has begun to pioneer a system of superblocks—small neighborhoods that are closed to vehicles with plenty of green spaces. In a 2020 survey, about 45% of women and 50% of men perceived that noise had decreased in their superblock. In a similar vein, urban designers have proposed building “quiet spaces” where greenery can shield city dwellers from unwanted loud noises.
There is no doubt that noise pollution is a serious public health concern and that in the US, its harms are particularly heaped onto the communities with the least defenses. For far too long, the EPA’s passivity has hindered the development of effective noise abatement programs both federally and locally. The paradoxical status quo, in which the EPA acknowledges the dangers of noise pollution in no uncertain terms yet makes no effort to combat them, has obstructed the public’s awareness of noise exposure as part and parcel of environmental injustice. The Quiet Communities lawsuit represents a long-awaited chance to revitalize the United States’s antinoise pollution efforts and cause a public commotion about noise.
Angela Lu (GS ’27) is a staff writer from Vancouver, Canada. She is interested in politics, economics, and Asia-Pacific studies and can be reached at lu.angela@columbia.edu.