From roaring leaf blowers to screeching trains, the world is full of unwelcome noise—and researchers have found that noisy environments can take a real toll on people’s mental and physical health. Arline Bronzaft, PhD, talks about how noise affects health and well-being, how it can harm kids’ learning, why it’s not just a problem in big cities, and the most unusual noise complaints she’s heard in her 5 decades of advocacy combating noise pollution.
Arline Bronzaft, PhD, is a professor emerita of Lehman College, City University of New York and an expert the health and mental health effects of noise. She has been a researcher and advocate on the topic for more than 5 decades, has served as an advisor to five New York City mayors as the chairperson of the noise committee of GrowNYC.org, coauthored the 2011 book Why Noise Matters and is frequently quoted in the media on the effects of noise. Bronzaft was awarded a 2018 presidential citation from APA for her work as a Citizen Psychologist.
Kim Mills: From roaring leaf blowers to screeching trains to your neighbor’s loud music, the world is full of unwelcome noise. Noise pollution is more than just a nuisance. Researchers have found that noisy environments can take a real toll on people’s mental and physical health.
So what makes something noise as opposed to sound, and what kinds of noises can be harmful? How does noise affect people’s health and wellbeing? How do noisy environments affect kids’ learning? Is noise mostly a problem in cities or is noise pollution more widespread? And what can be done to mitigate noise’s effects and give us all a little more peace and quiet? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.
My guest today is Dr. Arlene Bronzaft, a professor emerita of psychology at the City University of New York. She’s an environmental psychologist who’s been studying noise for more than 5 decades, beginning with landmark research in the 1970s that looked at the effects of noise from an elevated subway line in Manhattan on children’s learning in a school next to the trains.
She’s also an advocate. She’s been appointed by five New York mayors to the board of the environmental nonprofit, GrowNYC, where she oversees its noise activities, and she assisted in the 2007 revision of New York City’s noise code. She’s coauthor of the 2011 book Why Noise Matters and the children’s book, Listen to the Raindrops. And she’s been interviewed by many media outlets including The New York Times and New York Magazine, which recently called her the “Noise Queen of New York City.”
Dr. Bronzaft, thank you for joining me today.
Arline Bronzaft, PhD: Thank you for inviting me.
Mills: Let’s start with the most basic question. When does a sound become noise? And can the same sound be just sound to somebody and noise to another person?
Bronzaft: We know sound is a physical phenomenon and it goes through our ears and it gets to our brain and we identify the sound. That’s sound. But when you talk about noise, you’re talking about sounds that are unwanted, intrusive, bothersome, disturbing. And now because of literature as you cited linking noise to adverse mental and health effects, we now say that noise is an environmental pollutant. And let me add that noise doesn’t have to be loud to be that disturbing. Picture yourself trying to fall asleep next to a bathroom with a dripping faucet—that’s not loud. Or my daughter trying to study in her bedroom and the person above playing music, which she didn’t like by the way. But the point was the music wasn’t that loud, but it disturbed her. And that’s the difference between sound and noise.
Mills: Now, I mentioned in my intro that you’ve been studying noise since the 1970s when you did that landmark research on how noise affected learning in classrooms. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you first got involved in noise research?
Bronzaft: Well, I am an environmental psychologist, so we look at the environment and the impacts of elements in the environment. We would look at noise, right? We would look at crowds. And so I was giving a lecture at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York, on noise. A student came up to me at the end of the class and said, My child goes to a school next to elevated train noise and the passing trains disturb the children every 4 minutes. They’re not able to learn and the teacher’s probably going to have a difficult time teaching. And she said, We’re going to sue the city of New York because the noise we believe is intruding on their learning. And as the wife of an attorney, I said, You need data to prove that the sounds from the trains are disrupting the learning in the classroom. And she turned to me and she said, Can you help us?
And that was it. I went to the principal of the school. The school was a perfect setting, a natural setting. Half the school, the classrooms were exposed to the trains. On the quiet side of the building, no sounds of that nature. So I compared the reading scores that were provided to me by the principal of the children next to the trains and the reading scores of the children on the quiet side. And by the sixth grade, the children were nearly a year behind in reading when exposed to the noise. That’s considerable. And let me tell you, that study got lots of attention. The press was there, the media, the public officials, the parents, everyone was so disturbed by what they learned from that study.
But then I realized the mother had asked me to help her child. Publishing a paper did not do that. I had to advocate to lessen the noise next to those classrooms, having contacts with some people at the Transit Authority. I met with them. They told me they were testing out a program to lessen noise on the tracks. They were going to be installing rubber resilient pads. I said, Okay, choose the school in Inwood. Choose the school I did my study at, test out the rubber resilient pads. And I went to the board and said, how can we get acoustical tiles in the ceilings of those classrooms? Now people say to me, Both agencies in New York City listened to you? These were a little unusual, but I did have all the support. And The New York Times was also supportive.
Mills: That helps.
Bronzaft: And then they did test out the rubber resilient pads by placing it there. And they then asked me, actually a public official said, Go back, Dr. Bronzaft, see if it helped. Well, I went back and I was so pleased to be able to say that now with the pads installed, the noise lessened, the teachers were happier in the classroom, the children were. And guess what? Children of both sides of the building were reading at the same level. And those two studies, which were then reinforced by further studies that found that noise impacted on children’s learning, changed my life because I didn’t just publish two papers that are now considered landmark research. I got involved in noise and I found people coming to me with all sorts of noise and saying, help me.
Mills: Now you were able to get those changes. That was back in the ’70s. What has happened subsequently? Does the Transit Authority, are they still making changes to abate noise?
Bronzaft: The Transit Authority actually asked me to come in and help them with respect to noise abatement. And I worked with their engineers and I, a psychologist, no engineering background, was able to provide information on how to design a quiet, a traction motor. I worked with them and while I was there, noise was elevated. It’s not a top priority at the Transit Authority. So when I was involved, yes, they were doing things along the system. They then said they were to put in this resilient paths near all the schools. I think there were 54 of them. I said, Uh-uh, people live near the tracks. That should be a program for the entire system. They agreed.
And today you are calling me doing this interview at a very appropriate time. There’s been increased noises in the transit system, which they’re studying, and I was so pleased I was able to call someone who’s been there for 35 years. So I knew this person and I’m now going to be working with researchers in NYU and the Transit Authority to revisit the trains that have gotten noisier. But I think that action was taken. You’ve got to give high grades to the Board of Education and the Transit Authority and to think that they took a person that embarrassed them, remember those first study results came in, I wasn’t popular at the Transit Authority, but they said, you know what? Let’s work together and let’s try to quiet the system. So I think there are lessons to be learned here of how people can cooperate and get a problem solved. So I give them high marks.
Mills: What else do we know about the effects of noise on the physical and mental health of people? How has the research advanced since you first did those studies?
Bronzaft: The research has indeed advanced. I’ve done two other studies on the effects of aircraft noise on health, but didn’t have large samples. So I basically found that the people were being disturbed and their quality of life has been diminished. Studies have now linked noise to cardiovascular disorders so that if people are living with aircraft noise—and you can’t imagine unless you’re exposed to it, how awful that is—they are at an increased risk to being entering hospitals with cardiovascular disturbances. Sleep loss has been linked in studies to noise. Sleep is essential for good health. So the literature is confirming this. I’m actually working with a professor at Columbia who’ll be shortly doing a study on the effects of community noise on sleep of people living in that community. So the studies are there, they’ve been replicated. They have found that noise is harmful to health.
But now let’s take mental health. I wish you would be in my home when I get a call from someone who has a noise problem, the anguish, the distress, the unhappiness, the frustration of not having this being resolved, having been exposed to neighbor noise maybe 5, 6 years, having been exposed to noise coming from a venue in the neighborhood. Those are psychological effects, distress, disturbance. Now while the stress which comes with stress and disturbance can lead to physiological disorders, the mental discomfort and anguish and unhappiness has been identified throughout the world.
And let me add this—you may not yet have become ill. Your blood pressure may not have yet risen to a point where you need medication, but you know what? You are not living a decent quality of life. Quality of life is important. It’s not just enough to be alive. My daughter who lives in Queens with aircraft noise cannot enjoy her backyard. Wow. COVID came and what a comfort that was. No planes, birds singing and being viewed as she sat and enjoyed her backyard. I think people are entitled to quiet in their homes and hopefully they will not develop more serious symptoms. But when they’re being imposed by hazardous noise pollutants, they are missing out on living a decent quality of life.
Mills: Can you become inured to noise like that? I mean, you live in Manhattan. I used to live in Manhattan. I know that it’s very noisy. Eventually you almost don’t hear it anymore, but are you still experiencing the psychological and physiological effects?
Bronzaft: Yeah. You notice some Manhattanites in certain areas walk very fast. Do you ever figure out why do they walk so fast? They’re trying to get away from the noise. Sometimes a person you stop to ask for directions may not stop and talk to you. Give that person a break. That person’s trying to get away from that noisy environment. But in my experience, I think most New Yorkers will stop and talk to you.
Now, let’s talk about getting accustomed to a sound. That requires work, that requires stress on your system and that will cause an adverse effect. And I’m going to give you another term that comes up: learned helplessness, a psychological term where a person feels, no matter what I do, nothing is going to change. I cannot make another phone call to my legislator’s assistant. I can’t talk to my neighbor again. I have to learn to live with it. Living with noise is stress. It takes work to try to cancel out the sounds and go on with your life, and that is costly to your health.
Mills: Now, I mentioned that you’re on the board of GrowNYC, a nonprofit that people can contact when they have a concern or a dispute about noise. And your name and number are right there. Can you tell me about that work and the kinds of issues that you’ve dealt with over the years in that role?
Bronzaft: That’s it. My name and the phone number is of the office. You get to GrowNYC and Priscilla will contact me immediately and say, Hey, we’ve gotten this call. So I have neighbor noise is very high on the list. I guess we live in a society where people lack respect, where people are not acting decently. Would a neighbor turn on a TV at 6 a.m. and blast music to the neighbor next door or downstairs if she were respectful, if she really cared about other people? So many of those problems are really rooted and people not caring about others. And we’re living in a society where this is applicable to other issues as well.
So when someone calls me, I listen to that person and their voice calms down and they get to feel better. I’m not a clinician. I haven’t given them therapy. I’ve listened and I’ve been the first person who has listened. And even though I haven’t done anything to remedy the problem, the person is so relieved. You listen to me, you understand you will help me. Now, have I been able to help people? Have I gone to managing agents? Have I gone to board chairs? Have I gone to landlords? Yes. And I have to say that in many cases I’ve been able to help people. I’m going to give you another example that I think people may be surprised at. One of the complaints people have is the music venues in their area are allowed or the doors are kept open or the person lives downstairs. And I found that when the mayor of New York, De Blasio, the last mayor appointed a nightlife mayor, I found that I could reach out to her call the person who she reported to and met with her and she said she cared about noise.
And I said, Good, we’ll work together. And I did have a few complaints that dealt with music venues, but I had someone to call and someone who would work with me. It turned out she retired from the position, but she contacted the person who replaced her. He and I have already talked and we’ll work together. The other thing is these music venues belong to a national group and they were meeting in New York City and I was invited to speak to these venues from all over the country on how important it was to lessen the sound level of their music. Be aware that you can be intrusive, keep the doors closed. And I did a podcast with one of the, from the organization, which has been circulated throughout to all the groups. So I guess I do things in a reasonable fashion. I listen. And by the way, when a person contacts me, the noise problem, when I write to the landlord or to the managing agent, I always say, Let’s talk and let’s see how I can work with you to resolve the problem.
And I find that if we just respected each other a bit, we know that we shouldn’t have stomping on a wooden floor at 5 in the morning. And if you go to our site, we have a brochure that could be downloaded. And this brochure was written years ago. And all I say is be respectful. Be aware that your sounds may not be wanted by others.
Mills: Now, you’re unusual in that you have this position in the city of New York. Are there comparable people in other cities? Is there a network of people who do what you do?
Bronzaft: I belong to organizations across the country. I am the honorary chair, one organization called Quiet Communities in which I worked with groups on aircraft noise. And what it’s happened lately is across the country, groups on aircraft noise are growing readily and very knowledgeable, very involved. No, I don’t think there’s a comparable person as I’ve been appointed to GrowNYC where I have other obligations as well.
But I want people to also know that it’s not just an urban problem. You raised that. So I’m going to say to you, you know where my expert witness cases are for which I get paid. How would you like Montana? How would you like Wyoming? And you are going to—I know you smiled. What? Montana, Wyoming? Alright, picture this. You’re 62 years old, your husband’s 65, you’ve both retired and you purchased a home in a senior citizen community and it’s so beautiful and you have a backyard and you’re living there a short time when you hear a motocross raceway will be built next to your home. How do you think you’re going to feel about that?
And so I was called in as an expert witness by the attorneys, and you can ask, was the motocross raceway built? The answer is no. And although I could say my testimony helped, what impressed me was the decision by the judge who stated that noise intrudes on the wellbeing of people. And that impressed me. And I had a similar case in Wyoming. I’ve also testified on sound in Canada. I’ve been invited to speak in Australia and some of the towns are small, but I tell people noise can follow you. And I’ll give you a perfect example of a man who’s now page one of The New York Times. Donald Trump, Mar-a-Lago, has planes flying over his home. And you know what he did? He initiated a lawsuit to try to stop the planes and he had that lawsuit for many years. And I facetiously say, so he ran for president and the planes would stop flying over his home, which followed. They would stop flying once he was president and he dropped the lawsuit.
Noise doesn’t discriminate. It can go everywhere. You never know in your quiet community that a facility may be built next to you that will impose noise and you could be as well-to-do as Donald Trump, and you couldn’t stop the planes from flying over your home.
Mills: Now, we all know that New York is a noisy place. Even people who’ve never been there have seen it in the movies and they’ll know that there’s a lot of noise in New York. Is New York the noisiest city in the world?
Bronzaft: I think it’s rated that. But let me tell you something else about New York. New York passed noise ordinances. This is in the 1930s. We’re sort of number one in that. Also, New York has me on a site that says, If you have a noise problem, contact Dr. Bronzaft. But remember, I’m writing a letter as a member of board that’s been appointed by the mayor. That carries more clout. I don’t think “Dr. Bronzaft, professor emerita City University” would carry that kind of clout. So I could say that yes, being a city—but look, you are thinking of Times Square and when the ball falls on New Year’s Eve, yes, it’s loud, but you know what? That’s a pleasurable shout. You might think of our ballparks of shouts and screams, but you know what? When I go to Yankee Stadium, that’s what I do. You’ll find that we have areas in New York that are noisy.
But you know what? We also have a lot of parks. I live on the Upper East Side. I can walk along the river. During COVID that was wonderful. I walk along the river back and forth. It’s over a mile. I’m a little further away from Central Park, but I can go to Central Park. You’ll see New York has parks. We have green areas and we have now activists that are saying we have to protect the quiet spaces. We have to enrich our city with these places and we have to combat helicopter noise. We have that. But we have legislation in the city council saying that we should not permit non-emergency helicopters. We have legislation in the state.
Now, you should ask me, What about the federal government? What have they done about noise? Zero, in my estimation. However, if we go back and you’re going to have to come up with the president, there was a president that set up the Environmental Protection Agency that gave us the Noise Control Act, that gave us the Clean Air Act, which—President Richard Nixon, not only did he set up EPA, he put an excellent person in charge of EPA. EPA was coming out with literature on how harmful noise is to health.
In fact, their literature in late ’70s said, “Noise: a health problem.” Look how advanced we were in the late ’70s, and they were handing out brochures and they came to cities and talked to people. And then Ronald Reagan was elected president. He essentially shut down the noise arm in the EPA. But there were a number of presidents after Ronald Reagan. They could have refunded it. The Bushes could have refunded it, right? We could have—Clinton could, Obama could, and Biden could certainly refund the noise office. There’s legislation introduced in Congress. But they’ve been doing this for years to try to get funding. But we haven’t had an executive order that says, Hey, this is a serious problem. Let’s get back to what we were doing in the 1970s. And if you come to my home, I can show you their brochures, their pamphlets, and you’d see how active the U.S. was. No longer.
Mills: So what are the prospects of that being reinvigorated? Are you doing any work in that area?
Bronzaft: Yes. I’ve been working with groups across the country. They are putting pressure. A bill has been introduced by a congressperson and she has a number of people sign onto the bill, but there’s no comparable bill in the Senate. There was one. And so what I’m saying is that you have to join a group. You have to talk to people in your community. Numbers count. And the thing that comforts me, I should be disillusioned after 5 decades, right? I should say, Hey, it hasn’t happened. Or I should quote one of my daughters, Mom, you’re still talking about noise in the same way, have you accomplished anything? Mom, I don’t think you’ve made much of an impact. My daughters say that with a smile.
But what I’m saying, I can tell people that when the Senate introduced a bill by a New Jersey senator, he was the key person to re-fund noise abatement, back in the ’90s, Joe Biden actually signed in to support that legislation. He was definitely supporting it, but nothing happened. So yes. Am I unhappy about it? Yes. But what makes me happy is more podcasts like this one, more press coverage. It isn’t either that’s getting covered by the press, it’s the noise issue that’s being covered and it’s getting more attention. And that does give me hope and I’m going to wait and see because I think we will recognize this dangerous pollutant.
Let me say something else. If studies show that exposure to aircraft noise increases your risk of going to a hospital for a cardiovascular disorder—that’s going to cost money. When you allow noise to prevail, it’s costly. So even though the airlines say, oh, if we make changes—and they are exploring changes, let me tell you that they are. That could be costly. What’s more costly than medical health in this country? I think the military may beat it, but when you do not take care of a noise problem, like the children who were year behind in reading, how much would it have cost to try to improve their reading scores? They were year nearly a year behind. If you don’t lessen noise pollution, it will cost this country in terms of dollars. And I want that factored in when the FAA’s approached to provide quieter aircraft and quieter routes.
Mills: One of the things that I ran into when I was prepping for this interview was the fact that there’s something now called a noise camera. What are these instruments and where are they being used? What are they supposed to do?
Bronzaft: They’re in the pilot study stage. New York has the pilot study and they’ve done it in several cities in the U.S. and in Europe. Europe’s a little bit ahead of us actually when it comes to funding research on noise. Europe is definitely ahead of us. The camera works the way a speed camera works. When a car with modified mufflers that come to the corner blasting through, a picture is taken of the license and the sound level is registered. One of the problems early on was that if there was a car next to you that could be added to the sound level so that it’s not your car that made loud sound. It was a contribution by the car next to you. So they had to work that out. And so New York City now is a pilot study and they have found that, and when people are penalized that there’s less noise in the area. But they only have a few cameras. They haven’t yet issued a full report on it, but it’s the way of trying to get people to recognize that they cannot make noise on the road. Just as there are rules by which your car’s guided with respect to speed, there are rules with respect to noise. So this is being explored and people are interested in it.
Mills: One last question I want to ask you. What are the strangest noise complaints that you’ve gotten? Can you just hit me with one or two of those?
Bronzaft: Okay. A woman called me, an older woman, and said a car was parked in front of her apartment building, small building, blasting music late at night. And then she would hear footsteps going upstairs and downstairs and she couldn’t sleep. I said, what’s going on? So her aide got on the phone and said, Dr. Bronzaft, they’re dealing drugs above. And I must say I went to the precinct of that Brooklyn community, spoke to them and they said, We’ll, look into it. They did. The drug dealing was shut down. The next call I got was from the landlord who had been so frightened he couldn’t do anything about it, thanking me profusely and said, I will do everything for that person.
Now I’m going to give you another one. I get a complaint that the person next door to this other couple are hearing the bed banging against the wall at night when the couple has sex. That’s a touchy one. Fortunately, it was my building and I knew the housekeeper of that apartment, and I approached her. I said, the people next door are saying the bed bangs against the wall. So I would suggest you move the bed a few inches away from the wall. And that’s how that problem was solved.
And then I’ll give you my one early case. A man decided to build a windmill in his backyard. I actually went out to New Jersey and listened to that windmill. And I can tell you, even when I walked into her home, it was still in my head. The good news, the windmill was taken down. And from what I hear, that case is discussed in law classes.
So sex, drug dealing, windmills. I don’t think you can come up with something that I haven’t yet done.
Mills: Well, I want to thank you for joining me today, and thank you for making the world a little bit less noisy.
Bronzaft: Well, let me just say quiet enhances health. I didn’t say silence because I still want to hear birds. I still want to hear the air blowing, and I still want to hear the babbling of young children. Thank you.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe and give us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman.
Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.