Giuseppe Biondi
Dr. Hall
English 1121
Dear New Yorkers,
Nowadays with advanced technologies it is easier for construction industries to build buildings, and because of that cities are evolving to bigger and bigger cities everyday coming, but they also bring disadvantages. New York one of the biggest cities of the United States, has many problems that evolving cities encounter during their evolution like noise pollution. Noise pollution can be solved or relive with eco ideas and new instruments that we have today, or that can be develop by the industries themselves.
Noise pollution is one of the main problems that me and all New Yorker are experiencing every moment of our life. All of us can act differently of what the problem is, like people can install noise cancelling windows and doors, which are very expensive, or they just must deal with it. All New Yorkers that do take the train have to deal with the enormous sound that the train makes while moving in the railroad. All of this can seem trivial but can bring to sides effects. Noise pollution is more than just an annoyance; in fact studies have shown that noise pollution can damage physiological and psychological health, it can cause hypertension, it can increase stress levels and anxiety, and even lead to coronary artery disease. Children living in high noise pollution areas have delayed reading ages and diminished attention levels. What’s more, people exposed to long-term noise pollution often experience noise-induced hearing loss. Through the years there have been many experiments on the effect that noise pollution has on people. Exposure to prolonged or excessive noise has been shown to cause a range of health problems ranging from stress, poor concentration, productivity losses in the workplace, and communication difficulties and fatigue from lack of sleep, to more serious issues such as cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, tinnitus and hearing loss. In 2011 the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report titled ‘Burden of disease from environmental noise’. This study collated data from various large-scale epidemiological studies of environmental noise in Western Europe, collected over a 10-year period. The studies analyzed environmental noise from planes, trains and vehicles, as well as other city sources, and then looked at links to health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, sleep disturbance, tinnitus, cognitive impairment in children, and annoyance. What the study has found is that, it is estimated that daily lost from environmental noise in the western European countries are 61 000 years for ischaemic heart disease, 45 000 years for cognitive impairment of children, 903 000 years for sleep disturbance, 22 000 years for tinnitus and 587 000 years for annoyance. If all of these are considered together, the range of burden would be 1.0–1.6 million. This means that at least 1 million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise in the western European countries.
Today there are many ways which can help us reduce noise pollution. Many of them are simple and others a little more complicated but with the right approach all of them can be applied in our daily lives. A list of methods to help reduce Noise Pollution are: turn off appliances at home and offices, shut the door when using noisy machines, use earplugs, lower the volume, stay away from noisy area, follow the limits of noise level, control noise level near sensitive areas, go green by planning trees, create healthy noise to eliminate unwanted noise, use noise absorbents in noisy machineries, use proper lubrication and better maintenance, notify authorities about disobedience of noise rules, regularly check noise levels.
There are many ways of reducing noise pollution levels but, the first one that I would recommend to our city mayor is to plant trees which help to reduce sound. “It’s the sound produced by the wind passing through the leaves that really helps muffle noise” explains Robert Smith, a staff arborist for the Arbor Day Foundation. As a bonus, trees also provide habitat for birds, whose twitterings add to the pleasant background sounds. A properly designed buffer of trees and shrubs can reduce noise by about five to ten decibels or about 50 percent as perceived by the human ear, according to the USDA National Agroforestry Center. Trees also do make the city look greener, because what I see when I walk in the streets are just buildings, so it’s a good way to make the city look cozier.
Almost everyone in the world is affected by noise pollution. We can bring this to an end. Noise pollution is a problem that is and will be continuing to affect us if we don’t do something about it. We can make our voices heard by everyone in the world if we really want, and we can make all world stop for a minute and really think about this problem and how to solve it, so why shouldn’t we do it. Let’s make our voices heard by everyone in the world and especially to the people like us that do experience noise pollution every day. So, I’m appealing to the New Yorkers to help me get this message to the Mayor and all people in the world, if we do show lot of interest on the problem I’m sure that he will help us solve it, and everyone will try to do the same, one day maybe all people in the world will not have to experience noise pollution. Everyone in the world and by that, I mean nature and animals too, will only benefit when this will come to an end. Please share this idea to everyone that you know and let’s make it happen!!!
Sincerely,
Giuseppe Biondi
