Study Finds Noise Pollution Impacts Minorities, Segregated Cities

A new study from the University of California Berkeley published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives claims to be the first to look at noise pollution nationally “through the lens of racial disparities and the extent to which noise is exacerbated by living in segregated cities.”

The study found noise pollution is worse in minority neighborhoods and segregated cities and the researchers suggest traffic is a major culprit.

In Atlanta’s Westside neighborhood, there’s the constant sound of construction and traffic across Thomas Robinson’s apartment complex.

Robinson said the vehicle and crowd noise from the Georgia Dome, and now the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, has been a constant in his life since he moved to the Westside in 2009.  

“A lot of time it keeps me angry. Because I have to keep my windows down,” Robinson said. “Three o’clock in the morning, you can hear banging and extreme noises that keep you awake half of the night.”

He said he’s planning to move to the suburbs with his wife, where sound maps show it’s less noisy.

But inside the city, it’s not easy to find peace and quiet.

“A fair number of Southern cities tend to have higher nighttime noise levels, including Atlanta,” said U.C. Berkeley environmental science professor Rachel Morello-Frosch, one of the study’s authors.

She and her colleagues looked at sound maps from the National Park Service recorded over 13 years.

In segregated cities, they found people may be driving longer between neighborhoods, causing traffic.  

“There’s an amplifying effect of segregation, so you see racial disparities. But in more segregated cities, you see higher noise levels overall for everybody,” Morello-Frosch said.

That’s why 10 minutes away in Buckhead, it can sound similar to the Westside.  

La’Candis Brown contributed to this report.