Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Environ Res. 2021 Aug;199:111353. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.111353. Epub 2021 May 26.
Many environmental justice communities face elevated exposures to multiple stressors, given biases in urban and environmental policy and planning. This paper aims to evaluate sound level exposure in a densely populated environmental justice city in close proximity to major roadways, a nearby airport and high levels of industrial activity. In this study we collected various sound level metrics to evaluate the loudness and frequency composition of the acoustical environment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA. A total of 29 week-long sites were collected from October 2019 to June 2020, a time period that also included the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which drastically altered activity patterns and corresponding sound level exposures. We found that Chelsea is exposed to high levels of sound, both day and night (65 dB (A), and 80 dB and 90 dB for low frequency, and infrasound sound levels). A spectral analysis shows that 63 Hz was the dominant frequency. Distance to major roads and flight activity (both arrivals and departures) were most strongly correlated with all metrics, most notably with metrics describing contributing from lower frequencies. Overall, we found similar patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic but at levels up to 10 dB lower. Our results demonstrate the importance of noise exposure assessments in environmental justice communities and the importance of using additional metrics to describe communities inundated with significant air, road, and industrial sound levels. It also provides a snapshot of how much quieter communities can be with careful and intentional urban and environmental policy and planning.
许多环境正义社区面临着多种压力源的升高暴露，这是由于城市和环境政策和规划中的偏见。本文旨在评估一个人口稠密的环境正义城市中接近主要道路、附近机场和高度工业活动的声音水平暴露情况。在这项研究中，我们收集了各种声音水平指标，以评估美国马萨诸塞州切尔西市的声学环境的响度和频率组成。从 2019 年 10 月到 2020 年 6 月，共收集了 29 个为期一周的地点，这一时期还包括 COVID-19 大流行的影响，这极大地改变了活动模式和相应的声音水平暴露。我们发现切尔西暴露在高水平的声音中，无论是白天还是晚上（65dB（A），低频和次声水平为 80dB 和 90dB）。频谱分析显示 63Hz 是主要频率。主要道路和飞行活动（到达和离开）的距离与所有指标最密切相关，特别是与描述来自较低频率的贡献的指标最密切相关。总体而言，我们在 COVID-19 大流行期间发现了类似的模式，但水平低了 10dB 左右。我们的研究结果表明，在环境正义社区中进行噪声暴露评估的重要性，以及使用额外的指标来描述被大量空气、道路和工业噪声淹没的社区的重要性。它还提供了一个快照，展示了在谨慎和有意的城市和环境政策和规划下，社区可以变得多么安静。
