Since moving to Rhode Island a little over a year ago, Nina Lee has gotten to know the state in a way few others have – in the name of research.
Lee has been busy planting small, black boxes in strategic spots all over the Ocean State: from the backyards of random Rhode Islanders and busy city halls to rooftops of public libraries and Christmas tree farms in Little Compton.
She even left a few boxes in cemeteries in Newport.
“I was worried someone might see me setting them up and think I was studying some sort of paranormal activity,” Lee said.
But she’s not trying to catch ghosts. She’s capturing sounds.
The boxes – about 7 inches tall and 18 inches wide – are noise monitors, and they’re part of a project investigating the relationship between noise pollution and the health of children. Lee, a Ph.D. student and research assistant in the Brown University School of Public Health, and Erica Walker, assistant professor of epidemiology, have been conducting the study at the Brown Community Noise Lab.
In the last year, Lee has set up over 140 monitors, each capturing sounds at various locations – some in busy areas and others with little sound at all. But all the locations are equally important for the research.
“It’s important for us to get a variety of places,” Lee said. “We want to get that broad range so we can see how the different levels of noise influence different levels of health outcomes.”
The goal is to develop a statewide noise exposure map for Rhode Island and investigate questions such as: What does repeated exposure to noise mean for children? How does it affect their health?
The work of Lee and Walker is rooted in environmental justice. The research will also consider census data and demographics such as income levels and race along with noise levels of specific areas. The goal is to map out where vulnerable populations live, and then determine whether the sound levels are different in those areas, Walker says.
“There’s a trend of greater exposure to these negative pollutants in certain racial groups or social economic groups and that’s the basis of environmental justice work,” Lee said. “It’s trying to determine where those things are occurring, the reasons and how we can intervene to stop them.”
The first step of the project was setting up the monitors. Then comes analyzing the data: downloading it, cleaning it and processing it. It is a lengthy process, with hundreds of lines of numbers in a spreadsheet that can take several hours to sift through.
A bigger challenge will be building the computer model that will display sound levels for each parcel in Rhode Island, a map that Walker says will be accessible to all residents in the state, allowing Rhode Islanders to plug in their addresses and look up noise levels in their area.
Then Lee and Walker will layer the children’s health data, showing what sound levels a child has been exposed to since birth and allowing the researchers to make predictions on how the noise levels have affected children’s health in a specific location.
Data on children’s health will come from several sources, including the R.I. Department of Health’s data on emergency room admissions and medical data from The Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown.
The effect of noise pollution on health is not a new topic.
“Noise affects humans both when they’re awake and when they’re not awake,” said Charlotte Roscoe, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University School of Public Health, who says there is a “very clear” connection between noise pollution and mortality and disease.
Exposure to noise can trigger a stress response that, in the long term, can lead to chronic diseases and death. Roscoe says noise created by road and air traffic is particularly troublesome, affecting people’s quality of sleep. They might not even be aware of it.
“If we’re consistently getting poor sleep quality, that can have negative effects on the brain and lead to neurogenerative diseases,” Roscoe said.
Being exposed to disruptive noises, Walker says, activates a fight-or-flight response: breath shortens, heart rate escalates, sweating increases, as does the release of stress hormones.
“In the short term, that’s what happens,” Walker said. “But if you’re consistently activating that stress mechanism, that can lead to more long-term health effects, like the risk of hypertension, cardiovascular-related mortality, mental health issues, etc.”
While there is not a lot of research focused on the effect of noise on the health of children, some research indicates it can negatively impact their learning. According to the World Health Organization, exposure to noise can cause short- and long-term health problems in children, impairing early childhood development and education.
“We will see a similar pattern here in Rhode Island, and it will likely be due to several structural and historical injustices,” Lee said. “But we need the data in order to make any next steps on policy and change.”