Fall 2003
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(Adobe Acrobat PDF version)

FROM THE DIRECTOR      I am frequently asked by journalists, "What can individuals do about noise pollution?" They are looking for an easy solution, something you can buy.      The answer is not that easy. Individuals can help, by buying quieter products and being good neighbors, but our neighbors have to do the same to preserve the peace. And so does Harley-Davidson and SONY and FedEx….      Choosing peace and quiet is a community decision-a political decision. It requires activists and activism-it requires active citizens. This issue of the Quiet Zone is focused on what you can do. YOU CAN HELP. Join our effort to silence car alarms, to make sure flight paths minimize noise exposure, to build quieter schools, and to compile noise laws and evaluate noise ordinances. If everyone receiving this newsletter made just one phone call to a Congress member, that would be 10,000 more than they received about noise last year.      This newsletter describes relatively small actions you can take in the next week or two that collectively will have a big impact. I hope you will help our communities choose peace and quiet.      Peace and Quiet,      Les Blomberg, Executive Director

The Quiet Zone A publication of The Noise Pollution Clearinghouse P.O. Box 1137 Montpelier, VT 05601 toll free (888) 200-8332 e-mail: npc@nonoise.org website: http://www.nonoise.org BOARD John Moyers, Executive Director, The Florence Fund Peter Rabinowitz, MD, Yale School of Medicine Red Wetherill, Acoustical Consultant STAFF Les Blomberg, Executive Director George Brockman, Senior Researcher Peter Buknatski, Outreach Director Charlie Herbert, Senior Researcher Nick Rosenthal, Webmaster Garrett Schure, Project Director The Quiet Zone is published twice a year by the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating more livable civil cities and more natural rural and wilderness areas by reducing noise pollution at the source.

     For almost thirty years, car alarms have polluted America's cities. The insurance industry says they don't reduce car theft-but they do rouse sleepers, disturb readers, interrupt conversations, and make neighborhoods less civil. Now that silent, inexpensive anti-theft devices are available, the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse is partnering with the anti-alarm group Silent Majority to banish car alarms for good.

     Already, the New York City Council is considering legislation outlawing the use of car alarms within the city. A new report by Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit advocacy group, finds that the alarms are "alarmingly useless," and could be legally and effectively banned. New groups in Chicago and Hawaii are forming to introduce local versions of the proposed New York law.

     Now it's your turn.

This is the second in a series of articles on the future of peace and quiet. The first article appeared in the Spring 2003 newsletter. It provided a vision of a quieter, more peaceful future, and a historical context for today's anti-noise movement. (You can find the spring newsletter online at http://www.nonoise.org/library/qz4/.)]

     Even if the anti-noise movement did everything right-even if the President and Congress supported us 100%, if the EPA aggressively regulated noise pollution, if local and state laws were widely enforced, etc.-we would probably fail, in the long term, in our effort to reduce noise if we did not convince the next generation (and successive generations) to value peace and quiet.

     Young people growing up today are being born into a world where they cannot easily find peace and quiet. Peace and quiet is not an expectation of theirs. They do not clearly see the degradation our environment has suffered because they wrongly assume the world is and always has been noisy.

     It's up to us as parents, adults, teachers, and citizens to show them the value of peace and quiet. That is why the issue of noise and schools is as important as any noise issue today. If we don't take a long-term view, and work to create an ethic of respect for neighbors and an appreciation of quiet with our young people, any short-term reduction in noise will eventually be lost. It takes only a dozen short years for today's children to move from reading Goodnight Moon ("Goodnight noises everywhere") to driving mufflerless boom cars.

     Unfortunately, noise and schools isn't seen to be as important as it truly is by the public in general and even by the anti-noise movement. One year ago, NPC supporters were part of an effort to help protect a new standard concerning classroom noise. While the effort was successful, the letter-writing campaign drew the fewest responses of any campaign we have undertaken. Too many anti-noise activists view school noise as one more issue, like aviation noise, boom cars, air-conditioner noise, etc., and don't see educating our young people as the infrastructure of a quieter future.

An important first step that parents and citizens can take is to ensure that school classrooms meet the American National Standards Institute standard ANSI S12.60-2002. You can learn how to get a copy of the standard and measure the noise level on the schoolnoise.org website.

     This has been a bad summer for aviation noise. While traffic at many of the largest airports is still less than pre-9/11 levels, nearly one quarter of the nation's 400 plus busiest airports are reporting traffic levels greater than pre-9/11 levels (see table, Aviation Noise Takes Off at More Than 100 Airports).

Not all the bad news is in the air, however:

• The FAA's plan for the next five years, "Flight Plan 2004-2008" mentions noise only seven times in the approximately 8,800 word document. That is nearly doubled what was in the draft version (the increase probably was in response to NPC's complaint that noise was mentioned only four times in the draft).
• Senator Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, in a favor to major donor Northwest Airlines, inserted language into the conference committee aviation funding bill not allowing airports to soundproof homes below the 65 DNL threshold.
• President Bush is seeking to limit environmental review of transportation projects such as airport expansion.
• The FAA has used its ability to withhold funding to punish the Naples, Florida airport for being the first airport to follow the Aviation Noise and Capacity Act and restrict Stage II aircraft.
• The FAA also plans to scrap weight limits at smaller airports, opening them up to larger craft. This change, if it is allowed to stand, will significantly reshape the soundscape around smaller and medium-sized airports.
• The FAA is redesigning airspace around the country, starting in the Northeastern US. They are not, however, looking at who or what is underneath those flight paths. Homes, churches, schools, hospitals, it doesn't matter. They are redesigning the airspace for "efficiency and safety."

     It's time to do something about the FAA. Congressman Steve Rothman and Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey have initiated an effort to put nationwide pressure from Congress on the FAA to consider aircraft noise in its redesign. They have said, "We want to ensure that another goal of this redesign is the significant reduction of aircraft noise… We must take meaningful steps to reduce aircraft noise and the threat it poses to the quality-of-life for millions of Americans."

     Congressman Rothman and Senator Corzine have asked other Members of Congress from across the country, in both political parties, to join them in encouraging the FAA to include aircraft noise in its criteria for the redesign of our nation's airspace.

YOU CAN HELP.

     Contact your Members of Congress and ask that they work with Senator Corzine and Congressman Rothman in their effort to require consideration of noise impacts in the redesign of the nation's airspace. Tell them that noise pollution, and not just aviation noise, is a significant environmental problem that is not being addressed by the U.S. government.

     Contact your representatives and both senators via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

     In the next ten years, the nature of noise enforcement will change significantly. There are two factors driving this change. 1) Growing political awareness of noise as an important environmental issue. More and more middle class and suburban Americans are seeking better noise protection. (It is not just an urban problem anymore; see our last newsletter at http://www.nonoise.org/library/qz4/ for a full discussion of the suburbanization of noise.) 2) Falling costs of noise meters. Economies of scale will significantly reduce the cost of noise meters.

     Currently, major cities use decibel-based noise ordinances, while suburban and rural areas tend to rely on more subjective criteria such as whether the noise is "reasonable." There are problems with both approaches, but the biggest problem common to both is a lack of enforcement. Often there are political reasons an ordinance is not well enforced. Often it's because noise meters cost too much to have in many police cars.

     The cost limitations are about to change, and for many communities, prices already have fallen enough to make their purchase possible. Just as computer prices have fallen while performance has increased, noise meters are and will continue to experience the same fate. The key lies in economies of scale-the manufacturers need to sell enough meters to buy components in bulk and streamline their production.

     In the past, many manufacturers have mistakenly promoted their best (and most expensive) equipment to police departments. Additionally, acoustical consultants and communities have written too many local ordinances that require a noise expert to enforce them. This has inadvertently doomed noise enforcement. When meters are expensive, cities don't buy enough of them, so they are not available to police officers when they are needed. When meters are complicated, fewer officers know how to use them, so they sit unused. When ordinances are complicated, officers don't enforce them, so the regulations exist only in the books.

     Now, communities, police, and manufacturers are starting to realize that using lots of simple, inexpensive meters and having less complicated laws is a better situation. As 1) suburbs add their buying power to cities, 2) the use of noise meters expands into new regulatory markets, such as highway weigh stations, National Parks, vehicle inspection facilities, and 3) off-road vehicle noise (snowmobile, ATV, and watercraft) becomes more strictly regulated, demand will facilitate lower costs. In ten years, the markets for noise meters could be orders of magnitude larger than today.

     Already, noise meters are cheaper than radar speed detectors. Often, however, police departments don't have to buy radar guns. State and federal programs often provide the equipment to local police departments. We also need to create a parallel funding mechanism for noise meters.

     NPC is working to stay ahead of changes in noise regulation and measurement. However, creating new model ordinances (ones that protect the noise-polluted, not the noise polluter) for communities as they move into the noise meter market and developing funding mechanisms so local police departments don't have to purchase the meters are not the high-profile initiatives that attract funding. But these "nuts and bolts" initiatives are essential if we want quieter communities. The noise meter can be the friend or enemy of quiet, depending upon what the noise ordinance says. And since noise ordinances get copied from town to town, it's very important that NPC stay ahead of and be a part of these changes.

YOU CAN HELP.

     The first thing we need, to stay ahead of these changes, is to know what the ordinances say right now. We have ordinances from 200 large cities, but we'd like to see the ordinances from hundreds of rural and suburban communities, particularly if they use decibel levels in them. If you can, please stop by your town hall, get a copy of your noise ordinance, and mail it to NPC. We'll put the best on our website and use them all to evaluate and develop a model community noise ordinance for smaller communities.

     At NPC, we've been working on four big projects this summer. The results will be published by Spring 2004. Here's a brief list of what we're doing and what's coming.

Quiet Lawns

     We've tested dozens of the quietest lawn equipment available. We are currently looking for donors and sponsors who will help us promote the results and encourage people to buy quieter lawn equipment. If you can't wait till next spring to buy a mower, however, give us a call or at least don't buy a new mower without looking at the Brill electric reel mower or the Country Homes electric Neuton mower. Modern battery technology has made electric mowers a quiet alternative to the din of the internal combustion engine.

Quiet Lakes

     We've collected and evaluated the watercraft noise regulations from all 50 states, and we're looking into developing better regulations. Also, we've been busy measuring noise levels at lakes and the acoustic footprint of various types of watercraft. Our watercraft noise resources will soon include: "The Loon vs. the Jet Ski," a demonstration CD of jet ski noise; "The Lake Soundscape and the Unique Acoustical Properties of the Lake Environment," a tool for those trying to explain why our waters need extra protection; and "Why Tractor-Trailer Trucks Are Quieter than Boats," a report outlining the weak and ineffective regulations used to protect the lake soundscape. Also, "Drowning in Noise," NPC's previously published report on the costs of jet ski noise, is available.

Illegal Mufflers

     We've been attending motorcycle rallies, collecting state and local laws and regulations, and riding with police officers who are enforcing muffler regulations. Expect to see "Illegal in Every State," our report on what communities can do to ensure that Harley-Davidson's second century is much quieter than its first.

EPA Noise Library

     We've been adding several documents from the EPA's noise library to our website each week. Check out our newest library, which will eventually hold more than 100 of the EPA's most important noise documents that have languished unused in the EPA's basement for almost 25 years. See www.nonoise.org/epa/.

YOU CAN HELP.

     These are all unfinished projects. They need your support to be completed. Please donate to NPC. As little as 10 cents a day from you can help us see these projects to completion.

Manufacturers of quiet products, sound level meters, acoustical building materials, hearing protection, and acoustical consultants provide 10% of NPC's funding and many of the tools, products, and services needed to quiet our noisy world. Thank you to the following for supporting the work of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse.

You can learn more about these firms on our website at http://www.nonoise.org/products/index.htm. If your firm would like to help support the world's largest online noise library, with more than 2,100 users each day, and more than a gigabyte of data available, contact Peter Buknatski at the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, (888)-200-8332.

Thank you to the following major philanthropic corporate donors to the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse:

Acentech, acoustical consultants.
Acoustical Society of America, professional acoustical organization.
Casella Cel, USA, maker of noise meters.
E-A-R/Aearo Company, maker of hearing protection devices.
Ecophon Acoustic Ceilings, maker of acoustical building materials.
Illbruck Noise and Sound Control, maker of acoustical building building materials.
Noise Busters Direct, seller of hearing protection.
Owens-Corning, maker of acoustical building materials.
Pelton Marsh Kinsella, acoustical consultants.
Quest Technologies, maker of noise meters.
Sunlawn Push Reel Mowers, US distributor of push lawn equipment.
Wild Sanctuary, natural sound recordings, books, and research.
Quiet Solution Inc., maker of noise control products and building materials.

You can learn more about these firms on our website at http://www.nonoise.org/partners.htm.