Photo credit: Grzegorz by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition The Scottish newspaper The Courier has a wonderful piece by opinion writer Rebecca Baird describing how she is hanging up her headphones after “16 solid years of blocking out the world.” Baird admits that starting at about age 12, she used her personal soundtrack as
Photo credit: Jack Sparrow by John Drinkwater, JD, MBA, Co-Founder, The Quiet Coalition In a recent blog I praised Walmart for its “sensory-friendly” Saturday morning hours with dimmed lighting and no background music. Disabled, able-bodied and Walmart employees left positive comments about the new time slot on social media. The hearing disabled are our canaries in
Photo credit: Ray Bilcliff by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition, and Honorary Chair, Quiet American Skies Alexandra Marvar’s recent article in the New York Times explores the importance of birding to Susan Glass, a Saratoga, California resident who has been blind since birth. Glass, now 67, has been tuned in
Photo credit: Vlad Alexandru Popa by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition Noise is all around us and it’s harming our health. That’s the title of a report by Isabelle Gallant at CBC News, in Canada. Gallant reviews a wide body of research about the health dangers of noise, including some by Erica Walker at
Photo credit: Vlad Fonsark by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition "How do I block out annoying sounds from my noisy neighborhood?" That’s the question posed and answered on The New York Times’ product review site Wirecutter, in response from someone who moved from noisy New York City to the suburbs and found that the
Photo credit: Dany Kurniawan by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition On July 6, Jamie Banks, president of Quiet Communities and chair of the Noise & Health Committee of the American Public Health Association , joined guests Peter James, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Mathias Basner, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Photo credit: Owen Barker by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition A New York Times reporting team, headed by Emily Baumgaertner, released three stories last week examining the non-auditory health impacts of transportation noise. In the first story, reporters used a professional sound meter to capture levels of sound in everyday life and interviewed experts to qualify those findings.
Photo credit: Ksenia Chernaya by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition Our friends at SoundPrint recently published a list of chain restaurants ranked from quietest to loudest. The analysis was based on more than 3,300 individual sound reports from restaurants in multiple states with at least 100 readings for each chain. The Panera Bread
Photo credit: Boris Hamer by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition CBS News reports that Sweden is close to becoming the world’s first smoke-free country. On May 31, World No Tobacco Day, it was reported that only 6.9% of Swedes age 15 and older were daily smokers. That’s a much lower rate than in
Photo credit: Murad Murat by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition, and Honorary Chair, Quiet American Skies That noise complaints, including those made against neighbors, have increased over the past years in the UK is no surprise to those who have been paid attention to the issue of noise
