Plane noise

[Anonymous]

Today on the Palisades listserve, same thing. Plane shook the neighborhood after midnight, will start up again every minute in the dot from about 5am, it’s really just not even a debate any longer

[Anonymous]

I think Palisades ppl don't bring legal/other challenges bc they are focused on their housing value. They don't want to bring more attention to the issue bc it would depress prices. This way, they can foist their houses onto unsuspecting buyers with ease

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Palisades ppl don't bring legal/other challenges bc they are focused on their housing value. They don't want to bring more attention to the issue bc it would depress prices. This way, they can foist their houses onto unsuspecting buyers with ease

No it is because DC does not have representation in Congress.

[Anonymous]

Is there more that can be done to soundproof homes to make aircraft noise more tolerable? Could the government fund noise reduction measures in homes subject to high levels of airport noise?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Palisades ppl don't bring legal/other challenges bc they are focused on their housing value. They don't want to bring more attention to the issue bc it would depress prices. This way, they can foist their houses onto unsuspecting buyers with ease

No it is because DC does not have representation in Congress.

Even if they did, it's not going to outweigh the interests of members of congress from the other 48 or so states that fly out of Reagan on a weekly basis.

Besides, I'd love to see a DC poll on this issue -- How many DC residents would like to shut down Reagan Airport so the people in the Palisades don't have to deal with noise that existed when they bought their houses?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure if the Palisades people prefer takeoffs (higher decibels) or landings (lower altitude, more visually distracting). A pilot at Reagan remarked to me that the river approach from the NW has an absurdly-last-minute low-altitude right turn that violates all kinds of safety norms, making it ironic that the FAA is allowing that in their back yard. So perhaps Reagan is biased toward using the upstream Potomac River flightpath when winds don’t strongly dictate the opposite, since it’s safer to take an early turn on a takeoff than a late turn on a landing. Also, the upstream departure path allows for straighter routes to more destinations. It seems to me that the bulk of my Reagan arrivals come in from the south.

Somebody have the ratio handy of upstream/downstream?

I asked this question further up, and it would be interesting to know. I lived in Alexandria, and IME, it is more common to have arrivals coming in from the South and departures to the North, but I don't have data on that.

If you do an online search for "Washington Reagan River Visual approach," there's quite a bit of interesting discussion. It seems it's the pilot's call, but they encourage the river visual approach in good weather. If visibility is limited, there is an instrument approach that takes the planes directly over Arlington. I think that's not encouraged because of the tall buildings there.

I honestly don't know what these people want the airport to do, short of shutting down the airport, and that's not going to happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure if the Palisades people prefer takeoffs (higher decibels) or landings (lower altitude, more visually distracting). A pilot at Reagan remarked to me that the river approach from the NW has an absurdly-last-minute low-altitude right turn that violates all kinds of safety norms, making it ironic that the FAA is allowing that in their back yard. So perhaps Reagan is biased toward using the upstream Potomac River flightpath when winds don’t strongly dictate the opposite, since it’s safer to take an early turn on a takeoff than a late turn on a landing. Also, the upstream departure path allows for straighter routes to more destinations. It seems to me that the bulk of my Reagan arrivals come in from the south.

Somebody have the ratio handy of upstream/downstream?

I asked this question further up, and it would be interesting to know. I lived in Alexandria, and IME, it is more common to have arrivals coming in from the South and departures to the North, but I don't have data on that.

If you do an online search for "Washington Reagan River Visual approach," there's quite a bit of interesting discussion. It seems it's the pilot's call, but they encourage the river visual approach in good weather. If visibility is limited, there is an instrument approach that takes the planes directly over Arlington. I think that's not encouraged because of the tall buildings there.

I honestly don't know what these people want the airport to do, short of shutting down the airport, and that's not going to happen.

They follow the river for security reasons after 9/11. Arriva/departure direction is based on wind direction which may often come more from the west, thus the take-offs heading up river.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:People who are bothered by plane noise seriously bother me. Especially being that far out.

I walk/run by DCA several days a week - it's about 1.5 mile from my home on paths, and considerably shorter if you draw a direct line. It's white noise. And you physically FEEL takeoff and landing sometimes.

Not a big deal, but a tradeoff for living in the neighborhood we choose to live in.

If you're that abnormally sensitive, move elsewhere and don't complain about not having an airport you can get to easily.

This PP seems a bit too defensive. I actually work for a major airline, and I still hate the sound of airplane noise.

In about 15 years, we can expect quieter aircraft, as Boeing and Airbus have those in the plans. (Granted, electric airplanes are less likely.)

You are right. This is the first of these threads that took off; probably because the adverse effects and the terribleness of the situation are wholly undeniable!
Otherwise they just try to shame people into not dragging their real estate $ down by mocking it and others (calling them crazy, abnormally sensitive) but then can’t stop complaining on the private listserv.

Real estate $ won’t save anyone from a near certain disease. Estimate is 70% increase in cardiovascular alone. The only positive from a recent study was that
people go deaf sooner and then the effects lessen a bit. It’s the kids that will have the worst effects later in life from the ultrafines pushed by jets into lungs, brain etc. (not an exaggeration, directly from UWA, German, NJ studies).

Reminds me of Spring Valley people doing the same. We figured ok, but we’ll test the “cleaned” soil. I could have killed people with a pool me of the heavy metals from a spoonful of that yard.

No, thanks

Planes flying a few thousand feet over your head are not meaningfully contaminating the air in your neighborhood. The exhaust/fumes/etc. would be dispersed by the wind and spread out into the atmosphere before they make it down to the ground.

True, but it's still noisy.. We have high flying planes, but you can hear them very well, and it's not like a hum of a highway, it's a lot more annoying and unpleasant to human ear and brain. I am not worried about pollution, but can use less airline noise. I would be fine with a plane flying overhead ever 10 min and won't even notice it. But during the hours when most traffic is directed along specific lines (there is more than one) in our auditory range, there is no relief, because planes fly every 45 sec on average. Noise lingers, one plane leaves auditory range when the other one enters. It's why I think it's unfair to have these beelines in the sky unless you make more of them, so that traffic is dispersed and everyone gets a little, but nobody gets most of it for hours on end every day.

People, they are. It doesn’t disperse, please read the most recent science. It gets pushed downwards by jets into your major organs. Not to be too graphic, but you’re better off standing in the middle of the Beltway.

As at atmospheric scientist, this is painful to read. There is no downward pointed boundary layer jet. And ground level air pollution is much more highly tied to automotive traffic and industry.

[Anonymous]

I really hope you are an atmospheric scientist and can explain the issue better. Several studies found the same thing, and it’s that ultra fine particles are smaller and in effect are pushed down without time for them to become bigger and so are more easily inhaled. If the jets couldn’t push stuff down, what would the the use of jets or basic airplanes in crop dusting? No idea if that’s anything but that’s how it helped me to visualize what they call effect of velocities, wind and wing vortices below.

Anyway, here you go, but there’s a ton more from Europe, Australia etc, so perhaps you could come back and explain it to us, with the view as to not reassuring people but being objective.

UWA MOV-UP study:

To get a better picture of the potential extent of population exposures to aircraft- related ultrafines, and to model the potential extent of elevated ultrafine particles, we assigned emissions to aircraft landing and wind patterns observed during our study (Figure 20).
There is a relatively rapid downward transport of these aircraft-emitted UFPs and relatively little time for their physical aging due to coagulation with larger particles. This downward transport is due to a combination of large-scale daytime, convective velocities of up to one meter per second and local scale wingtip vortices that can extend vertically downward for several hundred meters at similar, superimposed velocities.47 This results in plumes from descending aircraft reaching ground level in approximately a few minutes near the airport and up to 15 to 20 minutes at 15 km downwind from the airport.
At these plume transport times, 10 to 20 nm UFPs emitted by jet engines have a characteristic coagulation half-life of about an hour, assuming that they are emitted into a background aerosol with a number concentration of 1x104 particles per cubic centimeter and count mean diameter of 0.2 μm.48 It is not surprising that the typical size of these UFPs in the downwind footprint are typically between 10 and 30 nm, indicating minimal coagulation losses.
The model results are similar to the spatial pattern of the Ultra-UF PCA feature derived from mobile monitoring measurements. The air quality model results and the map of Ultra-UF from mobile monitoring both suggest that communities underneath and downwind of landing aircraft may be exposed to this source of air pollution.
The differences in the spatial extent of aircraft versus roadway traffic UFP are important
to consider from a population impact perspective. We observed concentrations of total
UFP (10 – 1000 nm sized particles) to be higher at the near-roadway fixed site compared to concentrations observed at the near-airport fixed sites. However, most people spend a relatively small proportion of their time on a major roadway (e.g., during commuting), and because of
the relatively short distances over which roadway UFP decays downwind of major roadways, roadway UFP would affect only a narrow swath of near-roadway residences and other buildings.
In contrast, the affected areas experiencing elevated aircraft UFP tend to be larger. Therefore, considering the map shown in Figure 20, there is the potential for more people to be affected by UFP from aircraft than from roadway sources, albeit at lower concentrations. Moreover, those living within the area affected by landing aircraft emissions may be exposed to relatively higher concentrations of smaller sized ultra-UF particles.

[Anonymous]

And I will also say that learned people scoffed at “rumors” of increased incidence of prostrate cancer in firemen. It took a dedicated non-scientist wife to prove it was absolutely true the whole time. Something to do with asbestos in the uniform crotch. Painful to read, right, for a scientist? But totally true. And now accepted as a fact.

[Anonymous]

You could also argue if UFPs really can affect major organ systems leading to cancers, COPDs, dementias, in addition to the known CVD, stress and deafness from the noise (incidence of CVD up by 70% is reported). What I read says yes. But you could say no. It’s essentially at that point like debating climate change

[Anonymous]

Another way to ask the question is: is it good for people and children to live under a flight path? Is it the same as not? Who could possibly say yes, and be honest?

[Anonymous]

The study is carefully worded. When they interviewed the scientists who participated they were much more forceful. It was quite clear it’s a fairly devastating effect over time.

[Anonymous]

For example.
They state that roadway UFPs agglomerate more easily and so might stay in your respiratory tract. Not great. But with jet ones, there’s not time or defenses and so living under a flight path is much much much worse for that reason too. Plus some claim these are so small by the time they get from a jet to one’s airway that they cross bloodstream barrier and even blood brain barrier.

"previous studies suggest smaller pollution particles are more likely to be inhaled and to penetrate the body than larger particles," officials said.

Researchers said other studies have linked the exposure of ultrafine particles to breast cancer, heart disease, prostate cancer and a variety of lung conditions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there more that can be done to soundproof homes to make aircraft noise more tolerable? Could the government fund noise reduction measures in homes subject to high levels of airport noise?

Are you saying people shouldn't be using their outdoor space and should always keep their windows shut? How is this a "solution"? Solution would entail distributing traffic so that every area gets a little bit, but no specific areas get all of it. There is also tons of air traffic over NOVA. And then there are large parts of DC that get none of it, apparently? Protected airspace isn't the explanation, because river paths are super close to the National Mall, which is also protected airspace. If Planes can fly close to National Mall to the point that you can see them almost fly overhead when you are visiting monuments, then why can't some paths be positioned over DC areas while still protecting airspace over the VP residence? Also some paths are utilized heavily on some days, or at some hours, this means that other paths are not utilized. Can we do better? Nobody deserves to hear planes overhead for hours on end every day.