Residents living near Bob Hope Airport who have been waiting to take advantage of a federally funded residential soundproofing program shouldn’t wait any longer.
After more than a decade and a half of installing new windows and doors in homes surrounding the airport, the eligible area for the soundproofing program is going to shrink, airport officials said during a Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority meeting on Monday.
Due to quieter aircraft and fewer flights in general, the airport is projecting a much smaller noise-impact zone over the next five years — and that projection is used by the Federal Aviation Administration to determine which homeowners qualify for soundproofing projects.
“[The program] is going to remain to the extent that the eligibility area is there, but that area is going to be much smaller,” Mark Hardyment, director of environmental programs at the airport, said after the meeting. “(Residents) need to contact me immediately.”
There are 4,642 single-family homes and apartments in the existing noise-impact area, airport officials said. However, apartments are no longer eligible for the program.
The owners of 1,880 eligible dwellings have either not participated or expressed interest, despite mailings and personal visits, officials said.
Hardyment said that the airport has submitted to the FAA a draft of a so-called Part 150 study, which projects the airport’s noise impact until 2017 using sophisticated computer models.
Once FAA officials approve the study, the new noise-impact zone will take effect.
The reduction of the zone reflects the airport’s success in mitigating noise. In the airport’s initial Part 150 study in 1988, 1,138 acres were found to be impacted, and 26%, or 303 of them, were exposed to noise greater than the FAA threshold and therefore qualified for soundproofing.
In the 2012 study, 688 acres were found to be impacted. Of those, only 10.3 acres, or less than 2%, were still above the threshold.
Hardyment said the new study’s projections will likely be approved by the FAA in the next two to three months, but the soundproofing program will continue for some time after that.
“FAA has made it clear to me that they would anticipate there’s a transition,” Hardyment said. “It’s not going to be as soon as they send me back the exposure map. It’s not like a guillotine or a knife-drop.”
About $4.1 million remains for the program.
That’s enough funding to complete soundproofing improvements on the 33 homes currently signed up and to accommodate up to 60 additional homes, according to Hardyment.
Exhaust fumes from vehicles biggest cause of pollution
BANGKOK: — People living in the capital are now at risk of developing respiratory ailments, according to the state pollution-monitoring agency, which found that the air in five main areas of Bangkok contained high levels of particles from vehicles’ exhaust emissions.
Chatuchak district’s Phaholyothin area had the highest level of black exhaust smoke, with a pollutant level of 154 micrograms per cubic metre, which exceeds the standard air-pollution safety level of 120 micrograms per cubic metre, according to a report conducted by the Pollution Control Department (PCD).
Five most polluted areas
The five areas in Bangkok with the highest levels of air pollution were Ratchathewi district’s Rama VI Road, Chatuchak’s Phaholyothin Rd, Din Daeng Road, the Thonburi area and Pathumwan’s Rama IV Road.
The report noted that the air pollution in these areas was caused by exhaust fumes released by the millions of private vehicles on Bangkok’s roads.
Despite the sharp increase in the number of environmentally friendly cars in the capital during the past few years, air pollution in Bangkok still exceeds the standard level, particularly in high traffic-congestion zones, according to the report.
According to the Land Transport Department, the number of registered cars was more than 7,660,000 as of February 28. Of this number, 1,101,437 were private vehicles and pickup trucks.
Strict measures
In a bid to reduce exhaust emissions, the PCD will instruct relevant agencies to strictly monitor vehicles and take action against drivers whose cars emit excessive exhaust fumes.
During the past 10 years, drivers of more than 36,944 cars have faced suspensions, and 30,160 cars have been banned altogether due to excessive exhaust emissions.
In a related development, the PCD has found that Mae Hong Son province’s Muang district had the highest amount of small particles sized less than 10 micrometres in diameter (PM10) in the air in the northern region.
The PM10 level in the district was 101-219 micrograms per cubic metre, putting local people at risk of health problems, the department said.
The high level of small airborne particles in the area was blamed on recent large-scale forest fires in the province.
— The Nation 2013-03-16
Geonoise Thailand we are distributor SoundPLAN Software for Noise & Air Pollution Simulation
SURAT: Arvind Gayatri, 42, a weaving supervisor in a textile unit at Bhathena, has problem in hearing. He has been working in the powerloom unit for years. The constant sound of the machines has taken its toll on his ear drums.
Munna Sahukar, a native of Burhanpur in Uttar Pradesh, has been driving auto-rickshaw in the city for the past five years. He too suffers from hearing problem caused by different types of horns of vehicles. “I can’t hear if you speak softly,” he said.
“This is a common occurrence in urban life. I realized the gravity of it while working for my NGOs Saraswati Education Trust and Telugu Foundation Trust,” said founder of the NGOs and BJP councillor PVS Sharma.
The permissible level of sound in Surat city is 60 decibels. However, the sound level at many places is as high as 90 decibels. In this background, three ear and throat specialists, two psychiatrists, two chartered accountants and Sharma, who is a former Income Tax officer, have set up Shantam Foundation to help reduce noise pollution in the city. The slogan of their NGO is ‘Voice against noise’. The founders claim that this is first of its kind NGO in the country to take up the problem of noise pollution.
“We all are aware about noise pollution but don’t know about its effects on one’s body and mind. High decibel level of sound can create irritation and lead to depression besides affecting our hearing,” said Dr Mukul Choksi, a founder member of Shantam Foundation.
“Our volunteers will create awareness among people about the effects that sound pollution has on people through practical demonstrations. We have devised a programme to train children of city schools to fight noise pollution. They would be trained to talk to auto and car drivers to cooperate in not spreading noise pollution. We will start from schools, hospitals and main road junctions,” Sharma added.
“A team of 60 volunteers has been set up for the purpose. We hope many more would join us,” said Dinesh Patil, a volunteer from Dindoli, said.
BBC News: UK: England: 16 February 2013 Last updated at 15:32 GMT
The Woodland Green estate at Upton St Leonards sits alongside the M5 southbound between J11a and J12.
They are calling on the Highways Agency to install a new road surface and improve the sound barrier to help reduce the levels of noise.
The agency said four issues had been identified but it could not confirm when any works would be carried out.
“At three of these locations our investigations concluded that the noise should be mitigated through the installation of low noise surfacing materials when the existing surface is worn out, in accordance with our maintenance policy,” said an agency spokesperson.
Stroud’s MP Neil Carmichael said he “fully understood” the concerns after meeting with residents and councillors.
He said he had approached the Department of Transport with the concerns but it was “quite a big project” because the M5 was “a huge road”.
The councillor for the area, Keith Pearson, said that complaints were ongoing but he had seen an increase in recent months as the 10-year-old motorway surface had degraded.
He said a Highway Agency report, which he had seen, suggested the specific motorway section would be resurfaced again in 2015/16.
But the report had not mentioned any action to increase the effectiveness of the existing sound barrier.
The Outdoor Microphone Nor1216 is a measurement microphone for all-weather conditions. It is mainly for permanent outdoor applications, but may also be used for temporary applications.
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Outdoor microphone for community and aircraft noise
Horizontal or vertical reference direction set by external frequency correction
Fulfils IEC 60651, IEC 61672 class 1 and ANSI S1.4 type 1 (frequency correction applied)
Protection class IP 55 (dust and water)
Easy to calibrate with a normal ½” sound calibrator
Powered from sound level meter Nor140
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Low self noise – typically below 17 dB, A-weighted
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Further, compared to a standard measurement microphone, the Outdoor Microphone Nor1216 improves the measurement accuracy by reducing the wind noise and by improving the directional response for sound from different directions.
Combined with the sound level instrument like Nor140 powered by the external DC (or mains) supply, the outdoor microphone Nor1216 satisfy Class 1 specification requirements according to IEC61672-1 and related national standards.
The microphone is intended for vertical mounting only since the act of gravitation forms a part of the rain protection system. The reference direction may, however, be selected to be vertical or horizontal based on the applied frequency compensation.
The Outdoor Microphone may be calibrated with a normal sound calibrator suitable for ½” working standard microphones (WS2) without the need for extra accessories. Access to the microphone cartridge is easily gained by dismounting the upper part of the microphone.
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A new study suggests that some of the hearing loss caused by noise exposure can be reversed with drugs
Sound sensors: The delicate sound-detecting cells in the inner ear can be damaged and die after exposure to loud noises or toxic compounds (top), but they can be regenerated with a drug (bottom).
Listen up, live music fans. The hearing loss caused by exposure to loud noise can be at least partially reversed with drugs, according to a study published by U.S. and Japanese researchers last week in the journal Neuron.
The work is the first proof that a drug can spur regeneration of the mammalian ear’s sound-detecting hair cells, which can be damaged by noise exposure. While the hair cells of some animals, such as birds, can regenerate on their own, the hair cells of humans and other mammals cannot. The cells may be damaged by infection or as a side effect of certain drugs as well as after exposure to loud noises.
Previous research has hinted that gene therapy might be able to induce regeneration in the adult mammalian ear. Now, Albert Edge, a stem cell biologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues have shown that a chemical compound can do the same by stimulating supporting cells to develop into new hair cells.
The drug used in the study inhibits the activity of a protein called Notch, which Edge’s lab and others had previously shown prevents supporting cells from turning into hair cells. “It’s like taking the brakes off the car,” says Edge.
The drug was first developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease, but it failed—partly because inhibiting Notch, which regulates many genes within the body, causes side effects.
In the study, an oral dose of the drug improved hearing and increased the number of hair cells in deaf mice, but it also had significant side effects. So the team tried delivering the drug directly to the inner ear, where it should be unlikely to reach the rest of the body, says Edge. “When we treated [the mice] with the local delivery of the drug, they seemed perfectly healthy,” he says. “But before this would be able to be used in patients, we would have to make sure of that.”
A month or so after treating the mice, Edge—working with stem cell biologists Kunio Mizutari and Masato Fujioka of Tokyo’s Keio University School of Medicine in Japan—found that some of the supporting cells in the animals’ ears had turned into hair cells. The mice that received this treatment recovered about 20 percent of their hearing at low frequencies, says Edge.
The results are an important confirmation of previous indications that regeneration is possible in adult mammalian ears, says Alan Cheng, an ear, nose, and throat doctor and scientist who studies hair cell regeneration at the Stanford School of Medicine. “But it will require a lot more work to validate its utility in different models of damage—to say in any definitive way that patients can benefit from it,” he says.
To see how much the drug improved hearing, the researchers placed a small amplifier into each animal’s ear canal and, working in a soundproof room, looked for electrical activity in the brain stem in response to sounds. “The mice, before treatment, don’t respond no matter how much sound we put in,” says Edge. After the treatment, however, the team could detect electrical activity in response to loud, low-frequency sounds.
There is still a lot of work to be done before this drug, or a similar compound, could be used to treat human patients. “The recovery of hearing that we found is quite small,” says Edge. “In human terms, the mice went from profoundly deaf to being able to detect fairly loud sounds at a low pitch.” Next, the team will explore whether the drug can regenerate hair cells damaged by trauma other than noise, such as exposure to toxins.
Cheng also notes that while the mice were given the drug soon after noise exposure, most people will not seek diagnosis or treatment until long after the damage occurs. Hearing loss in humans generally isn’t diagnosed “until days or weeks have passed,” he says. “Whether the treatment is useful in a delayed fashion has to be teased out.”
Biomedicine News By Susan Young on January 15, 2013
An engineer holds a sound level meter next to a hybrid car / FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
DETROIT (AP) — A government safety agency wants electric and hybrid vehicles to make more noise when traveling at low speeds so pedestrians can hear them coming. The cars and trucks, which are far quieter than conventional gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, don’t make enough noise at low speeds to warn walkers, bicyclists and the visually impaired, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday in a statement.
The proposed rule would require the cars to make additional noise at speeds under 18 miles per hour. NHTSA says the cars make enough noise to be heard at higher speeds.
Automakers would be able to pick the sounds that the cars make from a range of choices. Similar vehicles would have to make the same sounds. And the government says pedestrians must be able to hear the sounds over background noises. The public has 60 days to comment on the proposed rule. The agency will use public input to craft a final rule.
NHTSA estimates that the new noise would prevent 2,800 pedestrian and cyclist injuries during the life of each model year of electric and hybrid vans, trucks and cars. The rule is required by the 1010 Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act.
Helicops use Twitter to tackle complaints of noise nuisance
Scotland Yard is using the power of Twitter to reduce the number of noise complaints about low-flying police helicopters in London. Officers in the Met’s Air Support Unit say support from the public has grown and calls about helicopters disturbing people’s sleep have dropped since they began tweeting about operations. The unit, which is based at Lippitts Hill in Essex, launched the account — @MPSinthesky — in January and it now has more than 25,000 followers.
Officers say that since then the number of people complaining about the force’s night operations has fallen significantly — despite a huge increase in flights during the Olympics.
The Met says it recorded 81 complaints between January and December this year, compared with 97 last year — a fall of 16 per cent. Officers with the ASU tweet from a control tower at the base where the Met’s three Eurocopter EC145 craft are stationed.
They reveal details of the helicopter’s role in searches for burglary suspects, missing people and vehicle pursuits.
The officers tweet as near to real time as they can to avoid giving details of their operations to the criminals they are trying to catch.
Sgt Richard Brandon, operational head of the ASU, said: “Tweeting has had a massive impact on the number of complaints about noise. People hear the helicopter but get frustrated because they do not know what it is doing.
“Having a helicopter flying low over your house at 4am can be disrupting and annoying. But if people are following us on Twitter they can see what we are engaged in.
“If they see that we have just caught a burglar in the next road then they know we were there for a good reason. It can be reassuring.” He added: “At first we thought it was a bad idea, that it would give away too much detail of how we operate and that we would be too formal, but I think it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done.
“We have won over people who were opposed to us and we have built up a good relationship with our followers.
“People who follow us on Twitter think, ‘That’s my helicopter’, and that is great because we are here to serve the people of London.”
The Met’s three helicopters carry out about 10,000 jobs per year, most of them in response to events such as car chases or searches for missing people, but about 1,000 are pre-planned.
One — code-named India 99 — has advanced camera systems and thermal imaging equipment and is deployed almost daily in hunting burglars in people’s back gardens or targeting robbers and rogue motorists.
Wing beat: the Standard takes a flight with the sky police
As soon as we are airborne calls begin coming in from ground units requesting assistance. The first concerns a suspect hiding on a rooftop in Tower Hamlets. He surrenders to police as we arrive.
A more urgent call immediately takes precedence. A camera that automatically reads car numberplates has “pinged “ a Porsche Cayenne as linked to “serious and organised crime” on a road in east London. Covert cars prepare to stop it and ask India 99 for support in case the driver tries to make a run for it. From his vantage point, air observer Pc Hugh Dalton zooms in with a powerful camera lens. We can see the driver as if he were a few feet away. The driver co-operates and talks to police and the helicopter flies away.
For five minutes the helicopter carries out routine anti-burglary and robbery patrols in Croydon. Then the ex-Navy pilot makes an abrupt turn towards Alexandra Palace to respond to an urgent call — a road rage drama with a knife.
At a maximum speed of 140mph, bobbing and weaving in the turbulence, the helicopter takes just five minutes to arrive but already the trail for the wanted car is going cold.
The crew comb the streets nearby for the VW but are pessimistic about success. They are diverted to an east London park to help search for a woman who is believed to be suicidal.
Then another urgent call comes to assist a vehicle pursuit in Clayhall. The suspect — grey tracksuit, cropped hair — evades the ground units and the chase ends in a cul de sac.
But as we hover 1,500 feet above the streets, Pc Dalton focuses on a man walking nonchalantly down a side street. The description matches and ground units are called in. We watch from above as marked cars close in silently on the unsuspecting suspect. He is arrested and identification is confirmed. The crew is quietly jubilant.
EASTERN; KENYA: Environment officers enforcing noise pollution laws on the weekend ruined the party for nightclubs in Embu town.
The National Environment Management Authority officers arrested six bar operators and several of their staff for playing loud music.
In a crackdown targeting bars and nightclubs that the residents had complained were creating a disturbance, three bars were found loud playing loud music.
Josiah Nyandoro, an environmental officer, led the operation to arrest a bar owner, three DJs and two managers.
Nyandoro said they raided the bars between 10pm and 1.30am after the bars ignored an earlier directive requiring them not to play excessively loud music that would disturb the residents.
Night limit
“We used a sound metre and found they were all playing music beyond 85 decibels whereas the limit for the night is 35 decibels. Some of the bars tried to prevent us from accessing their premises while in another one the DJ tried to run away,” said Nyandoro, adding that the suspects were locked up at Embu Police Station.
He said they confiscated eight music appliances that included laptops, amplifiers and speakers.
Nyandoro said they would be arraigned before Kerugoya Environment and Land Court today.
“Continuous exposure to noise beyond 85 decibels for ten hours and above can cause total deafness. We will act tough to protect the members of the public from being harmed by loud music,” warned Nyandoro.
Living above Taipei’s popular Shida Night Market, retiree John Lin gets little sleep. Until recently, vendors were allowed to stay open until 02:00.
“You hear the customers chatting, the shop owners yelling out the orders, and sometimes the boys and girls arguing below,” said Mr Lin.
“The noise doesn’t stop when they shut down, because the shop owners chat with each other until 03:00.
“Then the cleanup people they’ve hired make noise until 04:00. They’re followed by the government’s own garbage collectors who make noise for another hour,” he said. “You cannot live and you cannot sleep.”
Noise has always been a part of life in Taiwan, especially during its rapid industrialisation from the 1960s to 1990s.
But in recent years, people have become less tolerant of it.
The number of complaints has risen by 15% a year, to some 58,000 last year, according to the government’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).
That has forced the EPA to recently announce plans to toughen regulations.
Starting next January, the maximum amount people can make across the board – from homes, to businesses and factories – must drop by three decibels, which would cut the volume by half, officials say.
The time period when people can make loud noise has also been shortened.
The measures will be the toughest ever taken, said Chou Li-chung, an EPA official in charge of dealing with noise. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote
The problem is our entire government puts the economy ahead of everything else”
Chang Chia-fongTaipei resident
“Because of the property market boom, there are more buildings, restaurants and businesses. But at the same time, people’s lives are more stressful now,” said Mr Chou.
“They want a peaceful environment. They want a better quality of life. That’s why we’re making our regulations tougher.”
‘Round-the-clock’
The problem stems from Taiwan’s high population density.
The island’s population of 23m people is equivalent to that of Australia, but Taiwan is only a fraction of the size. Most Taiwanese live on just one third of the land; the rest is uninhabited mountains.
With scarcity of land, there’s little zoning – residences, businesses, offices and even some factories are mixed in the same neighbourhoods.
On many streets, the first level of a building is crammed with shops, such as cafes, shoe stores, boutiques, wonton and dumpling eateries, bakeries, hair salons and drug stores. And on the pavements are peddlers hawking snacks.
Above all of this are flats, offices, and more businesses. A construction site in operation in a neighbourhood in Taipei, 16 July 2012Many residents in Taipei say they find noise levels intolerable
Some of the noise is typical of any developed country – jackhammers, drills and car alarms. But some are telling of Taiwan’s lifestyle: herds of scooters – they’re cheaper than cars and easier to park, but louder.
Even late at night, residents can be kept awake by a nearby restaurant’s loud pet goose, supermarket or restaurants’ ventilation fans and freezers, temples or businesses setting off firecrackers to seek divine protection at ungodly but auspicious hours.
Among the top noisemakers are flat renovators. Since almost everyone lives above, below or next to each other in apartment buildings, the sound can be overwhelming.
Many people put up with it, thinking they might need to remodel one day. But in recent years, many have complained – about one third of noise complaints in Taipei involve remodelling.
Projects can go on for at least a month. Just as one ends, another begins. If a group of investors have bought entire floors of a building, the project can last as long as a year. And work is allowed even on weekends.
In some categories, Taiwan’s regulations are more lenient than that of Japan and China.
“The problem is our entire government puts the economy ahead of everything else,” said resident Chang Chia-fong.
She and others complain that shops are allowed to open even where it is against the law. And when noise police go out to investigate cases, they often don’t issue fines, just give violators time to fix the problem. Changing lifestyle
A few decades ago when Taiwan was still a developing economy, people were willing to put up with a lot more noise. But now it is a major high-tech centre.
With better jobs and more money, people want a higher quality of life and that includes a quieter environment.
Over the years, the government has taken steps to address the problem, including regulating low-frequency noise like water pumps, and reducing maximum decibels. Inspectors from Taipei’s Department of Environmental Protection read a sound level meter in Taipei, Taiwan, 16 July 2012The government has received an increasing number of noise complaints in recent years
But it is facing challenges trying to balance the increasing desire for a quieter environment with the need for more economic growth.
Some of the noise-makers argue that noise is inevitable.
“We’ve tried different ways to reduce the amount of noise and vibrations,” said Tsai Sin-fu, a manager at a residential building construction site.
“But people still complain. We try not to let them feel the effects, but we have to finish our construction project.”
There is already criticism that the new rules are not tough enough. But Taiwanese people are unlikely to get any peace and quiet soon.
In anticipation of Chinese investment, major cities here are expected to see a rise in economic activity – and that means more noise.
Back in the Shida Night Market neighbourhood, several people developed depression as a result of the noise, residents said. One family did not open their windows for a year.
After banding together, they pressured the city government to force the vendors to shut down earlier. The businesses are now required to close at 23:30, but many were seen operating past 00:30 recently.
John Lin and his catJohn Lin says one of his neighbours did not open their windows for a year because of the noise
For people like Mr Lin, it’s better than before, especially after he spent $4,000 (£2,573) on extra thick windows.
