Help us educate young people to protect their health from noise pollution

Noise is a public health hazard – for children, too!

Loud noise and pollution from aviation, landcare routines, industry, transportation, modified mufflers, and many other sources including airpods and listening devices, is harming the health and development of children.

Decades ago, a landmark study by Quiet Communities advisor Arline L. Bronzaft, PhD, demonstrated the impacts of noise on the ability of children in classrooms to learn. Through the study, she confirmed that children in their classrooms exposed to loud noise from nearby train tracks were a year behind in reading relative to their peers in a quiet classroom on the other side of the building away from the train traffic.

Now, Dr. Bronzaft works with Quiet Communities (QC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded 11 years ago by environmental health scientist Jamie Banks, to educate and engage communities in pursuit of policies and local action that will bring about a quieter, cleaner world. Noise and related pollution are negatively affecting health and environment in communities across the country. QC promotes quiet as a valuable natural resource and works to reduce harmful noise.

QC operates in ways big and small through six programs – Quiet Streets, Quiet Landcare, Quiet Healthcare, Quiet Restaurants, Quiet American Skies, and Quiet Coalition. Broad efforts include a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency to reactivate the federal noise program defunded 40 years ago that protected the public from harmful noise, and an initiative to help communities nationwide by developing a toolkit aimed at enabling residents in communities distressed by noise to educate stakeholders and advocate for change.

Two groundbreaking initiatives: this year, QC was awarded a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Environmental Innovator Challenge prize for work to create a community toolkit; and QC has been working with collaborating partner American Green Zone Alliance (AGZA) to convert landcare at 800+ public school campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District to quieter, healthier electric landscaping equipment, replacing loud, polluting fossil fuel-powered leaf blowers, mowers, and other power tools. Our work is gaining traction. Our advisors have been featured in the Washington Post, Forbes, Time, Scientific American, on BBC, and more.

And our work has never felt more urgent. Almost weekly, Quiet Communities hears from communities about noise issues large and small that pose threats to quality of life and public health and the environment. Children in these communities are too often at the center of noise problems. QC is dedicated to empowering community leaders to advocate for change, providing tools, like sound recording equipment, expert advice, resources, and connection to residents in other communities grappling with similar issues.

With support, QC would like to launch a Quiet 4 Youth program to educate children and their families about harms from noise. Two organizations – Earpeace Foundation and Hearing Health Foundation, and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health are interested in partnering on the effort and discussions have begun. But we need funding to take next steps – to design a web page, logo, shape a newsletter, and to develop program materials to engage children, families and educators.

If you or your organization would like to contribute to this important effort to educate children and their families about harmful noise, please reach out at info@quietcommunities.org, donate online, or send a check to Quiet Communities, Inc., 60 Thoreau Street, Suite 261, Concord, MA, 01742, with Quiet kids in the memo line. Thank you!