Photo credit: Mike Seyfang licensed under CC BY 2.0
by David M. Sykes, Vice Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The Pew Trusts—an influential non-profit foundation—is a major player in the media world, so we’re thrilled that two of their writers have recently published articles about noise pollution citing as primary sources several of The Quiet Coalition’s founders, friends, and colleagues.
Pew’s coverage is encouraging, because media attention stimulates awareness of the noise problem that has only grown worse from decades of neglect in this country.
Awareness has also helped stimulate a surge of private investment in America over the past three years in research and development related to hearing loss—with noise being a principle cause of hearing loss. One Boston-area company raised a whopping $228 million dollars in venture financing for a treatment for hearing loss and earlier this month filed for an IPO. That’s a huge change for a sector that has been ignored for several decades.
It’s important to acknowledge and honor the contribution of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for spurring this interest in noise and its effect on health starting in February 2017, when they began publishing on this subject.
