Perspectives on Noise Pollution Abroad
Having grown up in the suburbs of Austin my whole life, I never worried about living around a noisy environment to sleep in — the most I had was the light construction a mile or two away. Moving to New York for freshman year of college, I remember feeling distracted a large portion of the time, but never really thinking too much about it. Then, my “distraction” due to the noise got so bad, it became difficult to sleep in the night because I would get awakened by a police or fire truck sounding off. To be fair, I didn’t consider this a real problem because it was just something I could escape by putting in my headphones or Air Pods.
When I first got to London, the summer after freshman year, I had completely forgotten about my issues with noise pollution. Living back home in suburban Austin for the summer, I became acclimated with sleeping peacefully. Then, as I stayed my first night in London in a hotel near Russell Square, I woke up again in the night to the sound of a fire truck. Here, the memories of my “noise distractions” rushed back all at once.
While for me, the primary impact of noise pollution has just been sleep, there are a number of external impacts — a study by Mohammad Javah Jafri and colleagues shows that noise pollution leads to an increase in attention deficits, decreases in memory, and overall declines in cognitive performance. At its face value, noise pollution doesn’t really seem like a massive issue — a minor annoyance at best. However, I think that while it might be an issue that’s difficult to quantify, I would argue that a series of compounded, unaddressed negative externalities sum up to create a collectively unfocused environment.
Now shifting towards sustainability efforts towards noise pollution in London, one need look no further than the area around NYU London. One month or so during the school year, NYU London relocated to the Strand-Aldwych area of London near the London School of Economics. Walking around the area today, you may be surprised to find it quite peaceful, but a few years ago, it was a noisy area with traffic. According to King’s College of London Professor Mark Mulligan, this area underwent a pedestrianization scheme to reduce traffic in the area leading to a reduction in three fourths of noise pollution totally. This effort by the city shows London’s efforts to slowly fight noise pollution.
Now to confirm my research, I spoke with Michael Cheung, a student at London School of Economics to gather his thoughts on noise pollution. Michael told me that he thinks that noise pollution exists at the level of the city of London, but LSE does a good job of insulating itself from the noise. Moreover, while he saw differently on the magnitude of the impacts of noise pollution, he agreed that it was a problem that would have an impact on cognitive performance and sleep. As for potential solutions, Michael suggested the city of London institution of a no drinking in open areas rule, and lowering the speed limit at times of day when people are sleeping to reduce impacts of noise pollution on sleep.
A few days after learning about London, I traveled to Turin, Italy to visit my aunt and uncle living in the city. Previously, they had lived in Milan near the tram station, and had their own unique perspective on noise pollution. In Turin specifically, they found the nature of the city much calmer than Milan helping them have peace of mind. As for if it had an actual impact, my aunt told me one of her work colleagues in Milan had to move due to not being able to sleep at night due to the noise.
The day after, I witnessed the dissent with Milan first hand. As we were walking through the city, I heard loud noise coming from the Metro lines underground. As I went and watched the historical trams from the 1920s, I couldn’t help but wonder how the excess noise from the trams affects people living in surrounding areas.
After learning about noise pollution and its impacts, I don’t know if I can make an argument for the most important threat to sustainability, but I hope I have shown why it’s something we should pay attention towards. I think solving the issue does not emerge from a widespread shut down of service, like public transport, critical to a city’s urban infrastructure, but rather comes from minute, incremental changes such as Strand’s Pedestrian Zone. A world with zero noise pollution ,for the foreseeable future probably, isn’t possible, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take efforts to slow it down.
