Our noisy world is seriously damaging our health

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmjdm2m4yjo

As an introvert suffering social anxiety, I frequently have to wear ear plugs.

I avoid going out as much as possible, which isn't a good thing either.

I'm someone highly sensitive to noise -- I'm one of those people for whom the buzzing of electricity puts me on edge.

People scoff at my expectation/desire for a quieter world, or they make excuses for noise ("It's a city.") Noise pollution isn't talked about enough.

"Though noise really is all around us, from rustling leaves (20 to 30 decibels) to a thunderclap (120 decibels), it is this man-made noise that affects human health, leading to hypertension, stress, and heart disease. Alarmingly, according to Hempton, there are now fewer than 10 places in the U.S. where you can avoid noise pollution for longer than 15 minutes. (The Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota is one, but he is wary of publicizing many more.) And our noise doesn’t just wreak havoc on homo sapiens: In the natural world, sound is used as a clue and a compass—to help animals find mates and food and to avoid predators. Noise pollution scrambles the messaging and endangers the survival of auditory-dependent species like whales and dolphins, which use echolocation to communicate."

https://www.afar.com/magazine/gordon-hempton-quiet-parks-international-saving-quiet

SAVE ENDANGERED ORCAS FROM NOISE POLLUTION

#SouthernResidentOrcas are starving, struggling to catch enough #food in an increasingly loud, #overfished, and polluted #ocean. With only 74 left, a single catastrophic event could wipe them out forever.

#NOAAFisheries designated critical habitat for Southern Residents in 2006, but it still hasn't limited #NoisePollution within these protected areas.

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Unpopular opinion. #HeatPumps are great, but they are also a source of #NoisePollution. Folks who install them need to be prepared to budget in maintenance to keep their heat pumps functioning properly and quiet! If a sound is disturbing your human neighbors, imagine what its doing to wildlife!

‘The noise of the heat pump is horrendous – imagine an estate with 1,000 blasting away’

by Emma Gatten
Dec 21, 2023

"An independent noise assessment conducted on the property, a detached house not far from Nottingham, found that the Mitsubishi heat pump had a weighted dB level of 53 at 1m away,..."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2023/12/21/heat-pumps-noise-pollution-net-zero-environment/

I'm planning on submitting a summary of these studies as part of my arguments against the #GorhamSpur. I grew up near a 4-lane highway, and the vibrations and noise pollution were constant -- I hadn't realized how bad it was until I went back home a few years ago and camped in my old backyard -- and felt every speeding tractor trailer truck going by.

Evidence of the impact of noise pollution on biodiversity: a systematic map

By Romain Sordello, Ophélie Ratel, Frédérique Flamerie De Lachapelle, Clément Leger, Alexis Dambry & Sylvie Vanpeene

Environmental Evidence volume 9, Article number: 20 (2020)

"Ecological research now deals increasingly with the effects of #NoisePollution on #biodiversity. Indeed, many studies have shown the impacts of #AnthropogenicNoise and concluded that it is potentially a threat to the persistence of many species. The present work is a systematic map of the evidence of the impacts of all anthropogenic noises (industrial, urban, transportation, etc.) on biodiversity. This report describes the mapping process and the evidence base with summary figures and tables presenting the characteristics of the selected articles."

https://environmentalevidencejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13750-020-00202-y [environmentalevidencejournal.biomedcentral.com]

#SaveSmilingHillFarm #SaveRedBrook #SaveTheForest #WorkingFarms #MaineTurnpikeAuthority #Sprawl #InducedDevelopment #GorhamSpur
#Wetlands #Meadows #EnvironmentalImpact
#SaveTheWoods #Maine #GorhamMaine #ScarboroughMaine #WestbrookMaine #RapidTransit

Whale song mystery solved by scientists
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68358414

If you are an #EU citizen, please support this initiative for a #EuropeanEnvironmentAuthority and share it with others too.

It's not just about #climateChange , one reason it was started was to stop the destruction that happened at the Fertő lake from happening again anywhere else.
Other examples the initiative explicitly lists:
#waterPollution #TransboundaryAirPollution #marinePollution #soilContamination #noisePollution #transboundaryWasteManagement

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2023/000011_en

The future of one of tree-sparse South King County’s largest forested parks could be decided by [checks notes] the FAA Reauthorization being considered in the Senate rn ahead of a government shutdown. https://crosscut.com/investigations/2023/09/effort-save-seatacs-biggest-forest-amid-airport-expansion #NorthSeaTacPark #SeaTac #SeaTacAirport #FAA #GovernmentShutdown #HeatIslands #NoisePollution #AirPollution #PortOfSeattle #UrbanForests #Seattle #KingCounty

Social media: “economists only care about GDP!”

Actual economist in NBER paper: “We find consistent evidence that vessel noise pollution from international shipping has lowered fertility and raised the mortality of the SRKW [Orcas] significantly. Had noise pollution remained at its pre-1998 levels, the SRKW population would be 30% larger. Noise pollution is a growing threat to marine mammals worldwide.”
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31390
--
#economics #orcas #NoisePollution #oceans #shipping