This list of links, current as of March 2001, was compiled to assist students in locating studies related to noise pollution from aircraft. Please let us know if you have other links to share or if one of the following is no longer a valid link.
Citizens Aviation Watch Association has now compiled a number of airport-aircraft studies for public viewing on its website.
This will help the researcher, the policy maker, the media, the activist, as well as the general public, to understand just how devastating airport and aircraft emissions are to our health and our fragile environment.
Posted studies show how aircraft noise harms health and our quality of life. Unlike the ludicrous claims by the federal government that only 500,000 Americans are affected by noise, you can see major studies such as from Cornell University that shows over 10-million American Schoolchildren are harmed by aircraft noise.
Anyone can now read for themselves to find that just a small number of jet flights can cause a significant increase in cancer risks and that airport and aircraft emissions can affect a large percentage of the population for many miles around an airport.
A layperson might now be able to understand the differences between the various types of airport-aircraft air pollution and its effects on health and understand how various airport pollutants significantly contaminate our aquifers, waterways and water treatment plants.
When you are told that the problems can be mitigated, you can now point to data that shows that the major aviation problems cannot be adequately mitigated for decades.
One can now point to studies from all over the world, to prove that airports and population centers are not compatible with human health and well being. One can then make the case with evidence that we need better alternatives than expanding over 2,000 airports in the United States alone, to handle the predicted massive amounts of flights.
Below is an index of categories that are covered on the CAWA study website and a sampling of the Health Studies.
If you have any studies that you would like
posted please contact jack@areco.org
Jack Saporito - President., US-Citizens Aviation
Watch Association
www.us-caw.org (and then click on the "Studies" menu)
See: www.us-caw.org (and then click on the "Studies" menu)
Flying Off Course: Environmental Impacts of America's Airports. By Jennifer Stenzel, Jonathan Trutt, Carolyn Cunningham and Richard Kassel. October 1996. (Print version: 194 pp., $10.50)
This online report examines the noise, ground-level air quality, water pollution, global warming, and energy efficiency issues associated with America's airports. The information is excerpted from NRDC's print publication, Flying Off Course, published in October 1996. The specific data in the Airport Survey Results tables was collected in a 1995 National Airport Survey.
In a recent study by Gary Evans (in Psychological Science, January 1998), it was found that children's health is negatively impacted by aircraft noise. Researchers looked at third and fourth grade children near Munich Germany before and after the opening of the new airport. Approximately half the children lived in an area under the fight path of the new international airport, while the others lived in quiet areas. The children in noisy areas were found to experience significant increases in blood presure and the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol, while the children in quiet areas experienced no significant changes. Children in noisy areas also reported poorer quality of life after the airport opened.
A study by Arline Bronzaft, Ph.D.
In a 1997 study by Dr. Bronzaft et al. in which a questionnaire was distributed to two groups, one living within the flight pattern of a major airport and the other in a quiet neighborhood, found that nearly seventy percent of the residents surveyed living within the flight corridors reported themselves bothered by aircraft noise. They also reported that these noises interfered with daily activities. Further, the subjects who were bothered by aircraft noise were more likely to complain of sleep difficulties and more likely to perceive themselves to be in poorer health.
People who live close to airports suffer more than mere annoyance from ascending and descending aircraft. Beyond annoyance, aircraft noise may have significant mental and physical health impacts on people who live below the flight path of commercial and private airplanes. Since the 1970's, many studies have found aircraft noise linked to the following:
These trends need further analysis and documentation. Since the early 1980's, Federal funding for noise research has been nearly impossible to obtain in this country. Too few studies on the impact of noise on health have been conducted in the United States.
In a 1997 study by Arline Bronzaft, Ph.D., et. al. in which a questionnaire was distributed to two groups, one living within the flight pattern of a major airport and the other in a quiet neighborhood, the researchers found that nearly seventy percent of the residents surveyed living within the flight corridors reported themselves bothered by aircraft noise. They also reported that these noises interfered with daily activities. Further, the subjects who were bothered by aircraft noise were more likely to complain of sleep difficulties and more likely to perceive themselves to be in poorer health. When we examine noise in our communities, we must remember that the noise which injures parents may very likely be injuring our children, as well.
A study by Cohen, et. al., in 1980, examined the impact ofaircraft noise on children's health and found higher systolic and diastolic pressure in children living near the Los Angeles airport when compared to children living further away. Evans, et. al., in 1995 found a relationship between chronic noise exposure and elevated neuroendocrine and cardiovascular measures for children living near Munich's International Airport.
Studies have also linked exposure to aircraft noise with deficits in learning. A 1997 study by Gary Evans and Lorraine Maxwell found that first and second-grade schoolchildren chronically exposed to aircraft noise had poorer reading skills than children attending elementary school in a quiet neighborhood.
What makes these findings particularly alarming is that our world will only get noisier. Of all forms of transportation in the United States, aviation is projected to have the fastest growth. While a 1990 law brings us increasingly quieter engine technology, the projected continued growth of air travel threatens to cancel out these gains.
For further information on aircraft noise, contact:
Natural Resources Defense Council
40 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10010-4162
(212) 727-2700
League for the Hard of Hearing
71 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
(917) 305-7808
Fay, Thomas, Noise and Health, New York Academy of Medicine, 1991;
Cohen, S. Krantz, D.S., Evans, G.W., and Stokois, D. Cardiovascular and behavioral effects of community noise, American Scientist, 1961, 69:528-535;
Green, K.B., Pasternack, B.S., Shore, R.E., Effects of aircraft noise on reading ability of school-age children, Archives of Environmental Health, Jan/Feb 1982, Vol. 37, No. 1;
Passchier-Vermeer, W., Noise and Health, The Hague: Council of the Netherlands, 1993, pub. Number A93/02E;
Health Council of the Netherlands 1999 report entitled, Public Health Impact of Large Airports;
Natural Resources Defense Council, Flying Off Course, 1996
Needless Noise ,1999; Evans, G.W. and Maxwell, L., Environment and Behavior, Chronic Noise Exposure Reading Deficits The Mediating effects of Language Acquisition, Vol. 29, No. 5, September, 1997 638-656
http://www3.sympatico.ca/noise/
Regardless of the magnitude of annoying sounds, there is no doubt that public complaints everywhere are on a massive upward swing. Noise complaints received by Environmental Health Officers in Britain more than doubled between 1983 and 1992, and complaints against aircraft noise quadrupled. In Rio de Janeiro, 60 percent of all public complaints in 1998 were noise-related. According to the U.S. Census, noise ranks higher than crime, traffic and public services as a cause of dissatisfaction with urban environments. When New York City opened a hot line for complaints, 70 percent of all calls dealt with noise, far above those concerned about crime, alcohol, or prostitution, much to the surprise of public officials.
http://www.worldrevolution.org/Resources.asp?CategoryName=Noise+Pollution
http://www.pollutiononline.com/content/homepage/default.asp?VNETCOOKIE=NO
search on airport noise for news articles
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Stage 4 Aircraft Update
WebTrak™, an Internet flight tracking system, has been released by the San Jose Airport on their web site.
SFO Live Radar Flight Tracks allows you to watch the movement of flights and air traffic patterns currently in use within the Bay Area. This map shows flight tracks of aircraft arriving and departing from SFO, Oakland, and San Jose Airport and other nearby general aviation airports. (although not real time, there is a delay of ten minutes)