Aircraft Noise and Kids Health, The LAXStudy

Another Scientific Study Overlooked in the County of OrangeEnvironmental Impact Report for establishment of a commercialairport at El Toro.

This summary was prepared from the original report by a scientist member of the El ToroAirport Info Site Team. For additional information, visit the web site on the Internet athttp://www.eltoroairport.org and e-mail inquiries to the site.

Physiological, Motivational, and Cognitive Effects of Aircraft Noise on Children: Moving Fromthe Laboratory to the Field. American Psychologist, Vol. 35, March 1980, pp. 231-243 SheldonCohen, Gary W. Evans*, David S. Krantz, and Daniel Stokols**University of California, Irvine, CA.

Noise pollution has been primarily linked to a loss of hearing. Recent studies, however, havesuggested a link between noise and physiological processes associated with stress. Theseprocesses, including elevated blood pressure and levels of stress hormones, are considered ahealth hazard. Further, it was suggested that children, the sick, and the elderly are the mostsusceptible to noise impact, because they lack the ability to develop a coping mechanism. Aninability to cope with stress can lead to increased feelings of helplessness that, by themselves,can lead to illness. The authors decided to test this hypothesis by examining the effects ofaircraft noise on school children in Los Angeles.

Children were selected from the four noisiest elementary schools in the air corridor of LosAngeles International Airport. Peak noise levels reached 95 decibels (dBA), on the A scale, withone flight every 2.5 minutes. As a control group, children were also selected from three schoolsin quiet neighborhoods with matching socioeconomic status. A total of 262 children, from thirdand fourth grades, participated in task performance, on two consecutive days for 45 minutes.Children with existing hearing problems were excluded from the study.

Noise levels were measured for one hour in the two neighborhoods. Mean peaks for noisyschools were 74 dBA, as compared to 56 dBA in the quiet ones. This difference is significantbecause an increase of 10 dBA is considered to be twice the level of noise.

Perception. Both parents and children from the high noise schools perceived higher levels ofnoise at home, compared to their counterparts from the quiet schools. Further, the level of noisereported by the parents of the noise-school group increased with the length of living at the sameresidence.

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Physiology. Blood pressures were monitored once per day and averaged. The authors noted asignificant change in blood pressure between the two groups, with children from the noisyschools exhibited higher blood pressure than the children from the quiet schools.

Motivation. It has been suggested that exposure to high intensity noise can induce feeling ofhelplessness, which often occur when an individual cannot control or change a stressful event.This feeling, in turn, can decrease motivation to initiate new tasks and to lack of persistencegiving-up. Children were administered a success-failure test where both a response to failureand giving-up are considered as indication of helplessness.

Each child was required to solve a puzzle. Half were given an insoluble (failure) puzzle, whilethe rest received a soluble (success) one. After the allotted time passed, all the children wererequired to solve a second, soluble puzzle, of moderate difficulty. The percentage of failure tosolve either puzzle, as well as giving-up, was higher among the children from the noisy schools,compared to their counterparts from the quiet ones Further, the differences appeared toincrease with the duration of school enrollment, for children with longer exposure to aircraftnoise.

Cognitive. It has been suggested that children reared in noisy environments become inattentiveto sound, by tuning it out. When this inattention includes speech-relevant sound, it may lead toreading problems. It was hypothesized, therefore, that children using such a selective inattentionstrategy might be less affected by noise distraction. To test this hypothesis, children were given asix-grade level essay, where, within a time limit, they were required to cross out all the e's on thepages. One test was performed while a recorded story, at a moderate voice, was playing. Thesecond test, using a different essay, was conducted under background noise conditions toprovide a baseline. A significant difference in the number of e's found was observed between thenoise-school and the quiet-school groups, and it was associated with the length of enrollment inschool.

During the first two years of enrollment, the children from the noisy schools did better thantheir quiet-school counterparts. After four years of exposure to noise, however, theirperformances deteriorated. The authors concluded that ìthis finding suggests that as the lengthof noise exposure increases, children are more disturbed by auditory distractions. Further, theauthors suggested that, at first, the children attempted to cope with noise by tuning it out. Later,however, they gave up when they realized that this strategy did not work behavior consistentwith helplessness data.

Last, the authors looked at 20 children from the quietest homes who were part of the noise-school group. This sub-group was more susceptible to the effects of noise, as was determined bytheir lower performance in several of the tests and their elevated blood pressure. Thus, living ina quiet neighborhood did not lessen the impact of exposure to noise while at school.

This study, concluded the authors, added weight to a possible impact of aircraft noise onpsychological adjustment and on nonauditory aspects of health on children.

Click here for "Kids Near Airports Don't Read as Well", a new study from Cornell Universityresearchers.

Click here for the "Munich Airport study" of Chronic Noise and Psychological Stress on

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