Photo credit: Jose Francisco Fernandez Saura
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
Scienceline published an article by reporter Dawn Attride titled, “The city’s search for quiet: in a bustling city like New York, how does noise affect us?” Scienceline is a student-run online magazine published by New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Attride cites the pioneering work by The Quiet Coalition’s Arline Bronzaft showing that noise from an elevated railway outside an elementary school interfered with children’s learning. Quiet Communities’ founder and president Jamie Banks is also quoted. Attride cites safe noise levels published by the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization, both of which are exceeded in New York City. Erica Walker at Brown University, with whom Jamie wrote a pioneering paper about gas-powered leaf blower noise, is also quoted.
My only quibble with what Attride writes is that she mentions silence. I don’t think most people want tomb-like silence. What they really want is quiet; quiet so they can think, quiet so they can hear what others say and quiet so they can hear the birds. They don’t want to kill the noise, they just want it tamed.
I am impressed by her grasp of the facts about noise — something far more experienced reporters have difficulty understanding — and wish her a long and successful career in environmental journalism.
