Aircraft Noise

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It began with the first manned flight of an aircraft by the Wright brothers in 1903 in the town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, forever changing the face of transportation in not only the United States but indeed the world. The invention of the airplane allowed for the traveling of greater distances in a shorter period of time than had previously been allowed with rail travel, or horse drawn carriage as the more popular modes of transportation of the day.

It really wasn’t until the late 1940s & 50s that passenger air travel began to take shape in the form we know it today, and since that time the number of air passengers has multiplied exponentially. In recent years alone passenger traffic increased 7.2% between 2003 and 2004, illustrating an increase that wavered only in the immediate aftermath of the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001 (Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2005). In order to accommodate the increasing demand for not only passenger air travel but cargo air transport, military traffic, and civilian pleasure craft as well, cities began building airports that required large tracts of land as its major resource. In the initial stages of airport construction and expansion, many communities overlooked the effects of the airport on the surrounding communities in the immediate vicinity of the airport as well as the environmental consequences of construction itself. Many airports were built in or very near the “core’ of their cities or just adjacent to residential areas with no forethought given to the future expansion of the city itself, or the cohesion of the neighborhoods already present, thus heralding in one of the first and still persistent grievances from those affected by the airports; noise.

Simply, ‘noise’ is defined as unwanted sound. Sound is typically measured in what are known as “decibel” units, which reflect intensity, or pressure (Stevenson, p.2). Noise has been shown to affect health by causing both psychological and physiological damage, most notably deafness. Numerous studies conducted since the early 1960s (when the fist studies on its affects were commissioned) now conclude that excess noise can indeed produce permanent hearing loss (Stevenson, p.3). These same studies indicate that prolonged exposure to levels just over 80dB can promote such loss. As the chart below on average decibel levels of commo...

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...utput and the CDA procedure promises to put on the table a more effective solution that simply diverting noise from one affected area to another. Time will only tell if these measures along with continued vigilance, or lack thereof, on behalf of the government regulators and citizen action groups will make for a ‘quieter’ life for those living near our country’s airports.

Bibliography

Bronzaft, Arline L. PhD. “Noise Pollution Loses Federal Dollars” Hearing Rehabilitation Quarterly, Vol. 23, No 1 1998

Bureau of Transportation Statistics. www.bts.gov

Federal Aviation Administration. www.faa.gov

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Airports and the Environment. Paris 1975

Stevenson, Gordon Mckay. The Politics of Airport Noise. Duxbury Press Belmont, CA 1972

Thomson, Elizabeth. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/planenoise.html April 30, 2004

US Office of Noise Abatement and Control. Aviation Noise: the next twenty years. Washington, DC 1980

Unknown, “Entire Kentucky Town Relocated in Unique Airport Noise Buyout” New York Times, Sec A p.14 April 9, 1999

Vittek, Joseph Jr. Airport Economic Planning. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1974

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