Noise and light can be bad for us just like dirty water and air

The picture-perfect spot to live our healthiest lives would be temperate, with fresh air, sparkling water, and night skies ablaze with stars. It would be quiet, too.

Mother Nature, alas, has provided the planet with stark reminders in recent times about how far we may be from finding and preserving a more ideal world. As harsh circumstances and journalistic reports have helped to show, humanity must work much harder at protecting the environment, especially from obvious and lesser-known pollutants.

We do so for our own self-interest — to safeguard our health and our very existence.

As voters go into yet another decisive political season, a few takeaways about ecological and health matters will be good to keep in mind in the months ahead.

Activists and policy makers, especially in major American cities like Washington, D.C.,  tell a story of steady progress in the battle against air pollution.

Regular folks have new reasons to want more action for better air. That’s because so many of them suffered through a summer of choking smoke from raging wildfires in Canada. The unhealthy conditions — a grim reprise of problems experienced in recent times across the Pacific Coast and the West — this year smothered the Midwest, East Coast, and South. It made New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Atlanta, and the nation’s capital experience some of the planet’s worst air. The vulnerable — including seniors and those with existing breathing problems — struggled. Work slowed. Whole regions of this country went into veritable lockdown.

Researchers, as the Washington Post reported, also are finding that “a big chunk of recent air quality progress has been rolled back for one reason — wildfire smoke …Over the past two decades, air quality improvements have slowed or been reversed in most of the country, eroding about a quarter of the recent gains, according to a new study in the journal Nature.”

This provides a pointed reminder that the environment and its protection are a complex global concern, with dire consequences for neglect.

The American Lung Association has warned that the fight against air pollution continues. In the District, significant improvements are needed to reduce less visible but increasing, damaging pollutants like ozone and tiny particulates.

As NPR reported of a six-city study of 7,000 participants published in August, “long-term exposure to slightly elevated levels of air pollution can be linked to accelerated development of lung damage, even among people who have never smoked. The study looked at the health effects of breathing in various pollutants, including ground-level ozone, the main component of smog. The researchers found that people in the study who were exposed for years to higher-than-average concentrations of ground-level ozone developed changes to their lungs similar to those seen in smokers.”

Whether in fire-ravaged Lahaina, Hawaii, or storm-inundated spots like Florida, Southern California, and Nevada, victims of calamities must reckon quickly with the fundamental importance of clean water. Keeping this life-giving substance clean and usable, especially for human consumption, is a constant challenge.

Common sense, of course, should prevail, say, in deluged areas. Standing waters pose health hazards in the wake of natural disasters and people should avoid walking through, swimming or playing in them.

But what should be done about the giant, sprawling, natural and man-made systems through which the nation’s water must flow, freely and without taint? The U.S. Supreme Court has infuriated environmentalists by slashing federal regulatory authority over the nation’s waters in a case involving property owner rights. Big landowners, agricultural and development interests are locked in combat with cities and consumers over water, especially in the West.

As one environmentalist wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed about the high court decision: “It is the latest sign that many decision makers in Washington have lost touch with the increasingly fragile state of the natural systems that provide drinking water, flood protection, and critical habitat for people and wildlife in every state.”

Tens of millions of Americans grapple “with water insecurity —either no running water or water that may be unsafe to drink.” Tens of millions of us have indoor plumbing, but with water systems that recently have violated federal drinking water standards. Those are some shocking estimates, as reported in Fast Company magazine. Tens of millions of us also rely on well water supplies with shaky futures due to drought or other aspects of climate change.

A rare, bipartisan effort in Congress has provided glimmers of hope for millions of Americans and their water supplies. After the scandal in Flint, Mich., erupted in 2014, and with concerns spiking elsewhere in the country, members of Congress approved billions of dollars to remove and replace lead pipes that leach and poison water supplies, proving especially damaging to developing youngsters.

Quiet, please! That’s a health-related rallying plea for tens of millions Americans, the New York Times has reported, based on its recent investigative dig into the damages caused by the excess noise of modern living.

Many folks may believe that they have adjusted to the cacophony of urban life, particularly if their homes or jobs are near noisy transportation (busy airports or highways) or raucous venues (manufacturing, industrial, entertainment, athletic, medical, and even educational sites).

But the newspaper reported that even quieter, suburban, ex-urban, and rural areas can suffer noise pollution. It is detrimental to people’s well-being in different ways, with jarring and disruptive sound eruptions. Leaf blowers. Power tools. Sudden rumbles from heavy farm equipment. Howls and shrieks from wildlife.

Noise, as a pollutant, is a “largely unrecognized health threat” that spikes the “risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks worldwide, including for more than 100 million Americans,” the New York Times reported. A steady din or sharp, sudden sounds trigger subconscious responses associated with high stress on the body, triggering heart, circulatory, and breathing problems, the newspaper said.

Poorer people and communities of color are harmed most by pollution of various kinds, including from noise, because their neighborhoods are most likely to include undesirable businesses and uses excluded by the more affluent. But noise has become an increasing pollutant across the country, increasing for too many people in volume, intensity, and frequency.

Federal officials once sought to regulate and reduce noise pollution. President Reagan spiked those efforts. Individual cities have tried to deal with the problem. But it requires greater public awareness of the hazards it poses and broader, more powerful oversight for corrections, according to advocates interviewed by National Public Radio.

A growing number of experts have a bright idea to improve the nation’s health: Let there be … darkness.

With an estimated 8 of 10 Americans living in urban areas, light pollution and the “painful” loss of dark skies (or noctalgia) has become an increasing health peril for people, the National Geographic magazine has reported:

“Artificial light can wreak havoc on natural body rhythms in both humans and animals. Nocturnal light interrupts sleep and confuses the circadian rhythm—the internal, 24-hour clock that guides day and night activities and affects physiological processes in nearly all living organisms.”

CBS News reported that the prevalence of illumination, especially the rise of “cheaper, cleaner, and brighter” LED lights, creates a range of harms:

“Research shows too much light at night can interrupt our sleep cycle, potentially contributing to health issues like certain cancers and heart problems. It’s also a major factor in the decline of insect populations which require darkness to navigate, and it contributes to the death of hundreds of millions of birds each year that fly into brightly lit buildings. “

Friends and foes of artificial lighting surprisingly agree that remedies are possible without casting civilization into a medieval darkness, according to a report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Greater public awareness is a must.

But pollution could be reduced by ensuring that outdoor lights, in particular, are installed only where necessary and be only as bright as appropriate. Blaring, garish billboards and displays don’t fit everywhere. Outdoor sources could be lit with limited hours.

With technological advances, lights also can be modified by color and intensity to reduce their effects on plants, wildlife, and people. Officials may wish to designate light-sensitive areas and limit or eliminate lighting in these areas. These might include zones to protect nocturnal animals on land and in lakes and oceans, as well as spots where scientists study the sky and stars.

People can reduce health harms from disruptive light at night by turning off lamps and devices just before and during sleep. Blue light from screens — on tablets, video games, and TVs — is especially bad for sound sleep and the rest that the young, especially, need to be healthy and grow.

Painting, ‘La Nuit étoilée,’ Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, courtesy Musée d’Orsay

As the planet shatters its heat records, more and more people are reckoning with the significant damage that extreme temperatures can inflict on people’s health and well-being.

This is a topic that this newsletter has explored before — and in greater depth. (Click here to read the past issue).

Suffice it to say that climate change is a real threat to our health and our very existence.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists multiple areas where its experts see big problems ahead due to rapid, harsh changes in the environment. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences lists its own range of impacts, including:

§ Asthma, respiratory allergies, and airway diseases
§ Cancer
§ Cardiovascular disease and stroke
§ Foodborne diseases and nutrition …
§ Mental health and stress-related disorders
§ Neurological diseases and disorders
§ Diseases borne by pests and animals and
§ Waterborne Diseases

Extreme heat and cold (the public will be hearing about this as the season changes in the Northern Hemisphere) play havoc with the health of the vulnerable, including the young, the old, and those with chronic conditions.

They need special attention from friends, neighbors, colleagues, and loved ones during times when the weather threatens. Besides taking care of our immediate families, community members should support others with high needs. They can assist them in getting to special sites for cooling and warming. They may need help staying hydrated, protected from the elements, and supplied with food, medicines, and other goods and services.

Those who work in extreme conditions must take care. And lawmakers and regulators must do much more to ensure that employers and workplaces provide appropriate support (e.g. special gear, other resources, shelter) for frontline employees laboring in high heat or cold.

Deaths attributed to heat and cold occur in significant enough numbers that they cannot be ignored. Many can be prevented, experts say.

Photo courtesy of NASA