Science & Health

Studying the Noise-y Nature of New York City

By Jayla Cordero
Spectrum staff

Most New Yorkers know how noisy the city can get.

There’s blaring music, honking car horns, jackhammers, emergency sirens, kids screaming and whole lot less quiet than many–if not most–other places.

The city is so noisy, in fact, that researchers at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development are using a $4.6 million National Science Foundation grant to continue their study of noise.

Those researchers already had concluded that constant and excessive noise might disrupt sleep, increase stress and make people more annoyed and distracted. And those are just some of the short-term effects. They also concluded that, in the long term, excessive noise might even raise a body’s blood pressure, cause hearing loss and some forms of heart disease. Noise can keep children from doing their best in school, researchers suggest.

NYU’s research will be based on the sounds captured by up to 100 special computerized sensors, installed at targeted locations.

On the streets, New Yorkers also have a few things to say about noise.

“Sirens make me very angry. I get stressed out, I immediately tense up,” said Neha Agrawal, 28, a student in psychology at Yeshiva University. “Even if it’s so often, I am not used to it.”

“Just the real loud stuff, like, when someone is shouting at you. And the sirens … “ said Erik Holst-Grubbe, 50, who was sitting on a bench in Union Square, with horns honking their way through the mid-afternoon traffic.

New York City health officials are partnering with the NYU researchers for the SONYC study. (SONYC stands for Sounds of New York City.)

And the city’s Noise Guide tells residents what are the allowable decibels of noise generated by building construction sites, cats, dogs, neighbors, bars, restaurants and so on. For example, anyone using a cell phone in a public place, legally, must keep the volume to a minimum.

The city’s 3-1-1 hotline for submitting concerns to New York City agencies has recorded noise complaints since 2010. Noise is high on the list of things residents complain about, officials report.

The NYU researchers, according to their auto-respond emails, were either out of the office during the summer or they declined to be interviewed for this report, saying they were busy raising more money for research and development of their study.

Regardless of what the study finds, some New Yorkers said all the noise is one of the costs of living in the Big Apple.

Only car honking and emergency sirens bother Rachel Duffy, 25, also a Yeshiva University graduate student in psychology. “Everything else is white noise to me,” she said.

Howie Kantoff, 49, an academic adviser at Northwestern University, who was visiting from Illinois, and sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, said, “It’s fine to have a place to go that’s quiet. But there’s no way around it,” meaning New York City noise.

Lina Markus, 23, an engineer visiting from her native Germany, said, “It’s the lifestyle of New York and I wouldn’t change it. But, I think, if you have to live here, then, it must be hard.”