Airplane noise concerns overblown?

[Anonymous]

Just to add that the noise itself (whether you tune it out or not) and the stress (which you may not “feel” but the body does) pose their own set of health issues.

These actually abate in the old age as a function of hearing loss (which is in part due to that lifetime noise exposure)

Essentially anything over 50 during the day and 40-45 at night in a big city is a big stressor. These planes break 70-80 in the Palisades regularly. Yes, it depends on your house too but it’s the combination of annoyance, persistence/relentlessness and the noise levels that’s the issue

[Anonymous]

Shocking how no one else here cares about the above issues.

Or they realize that particulate pollution is emitted by cars, trucks and buses as well as aircraft, and they all carry risks. The commenters here on DCUM are much likely to live alongside a busy road or bus route than they are alongside a runway.

[Anonymous]

There’s a DC study, but it ignores the ultra fines (PM0.1) and only looks at PM2.5: https://eos.org/research-spotlights/air-pollution-poses-inequitable-health-risks-in-washington-d-c

It also mixes in the access to good health care so not sure how useful it is. FWIW, Woodley Park and Georgetown East are the least impacted neighborhoods in all of DC according to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Shocking how no one else here cares about the above issues.

Or they realize that particulate pollution is emitted by cars, trucks and buses as well as aircraft, and they all carry risks. The commenters here on DCUM are much likely to live alongside a busy road or bus route than they are alongside a runway.

That’s wrong. Those PMs are larger and disperse lower (under your airway vs. above it with push down forces). To get a similar effect you’d have to live and sleep on a major highway with all diesel vehicles, and it still wouldn’t be quite as bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Live in Glen Echo Heights, near the river/MacArthur. It's mostly a background hum. Occasionally there is a plane with engines throttled up that is unusually loud. If you're drifting in/out of sleep at 5:58am, there is about 20 minutes of steady landing approaches. Inside, it's not much. Used to live in the city and it was consistently way noisier due to traffic, sirens, etc.

Exactly this. It's seriously just background noise unless there's a throttler or a bunch of the fedex or ups whatevers. You can hear them early in large clusters. It's kind of comforting to know it's morning soon, time for coffee. And those planes have all of our precious Amazon goods and Zappo shoes we can't live without!

Seriously, it's better for your health to not stress about it.

There are MILLIONS of people who live in cities. Real inner noisy cities. And people are crying into their cosmos about this. SMDH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regan should be closed IMO. Ultra fine particles dumping all over the city is giving us all a higher risk of cancer.

Agree. Except it’s not all over the city, is it? It’s very well concentrated in a tight corridor. There’s some historic justice in the areas closer to and EOTP not being affected.

Also there are massive no fly zones — draw large circles around the VP residence, the White House. And then there’s no need to fly over adjacent neighborhoods since you want to be closer to the river. So most of the city is fine.

Wind carries it all over.

True. But very diluted and dispersed, with much longer time to reach the ground. Under the flight path 10 miles from the airport it’s almost like some is leaf blowing this pollution straight into your airways.

Think about how long it would take a 0.1 micron particle to gently float on the breeze and down to the ground farther away vs. being pushed down directly under the flight path. A study suggests over an hour or more vs. 10 mins.

A good analogy is a smoke from a fire, much different if standing next to the fire pit (your hair and clothes smell right?) vs. several miles away

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Shocking how no one else here cares about the above issues.

Or they realize that particulate pollution is emitted by cars, trucks and buses as well as aircraft, and they all carry risks. The commenters here on DCUM are much likely to live alongside a busy road or bus route than they are alongside a runway.

That’s wrong. Those PMs are larger and disperse lower (under your airway vs. above it with push down forces). To get a similar effect you’d have to live and sleep on a major highway with all diesel vehicles, and it still wouldn’t be quite as bad.

Exactly. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Key points:

Ultrafine particles are less than 100 nanometers in diameter — one one-thousandth the width of a human hair — and their impact on health is only beginning to be studied. Ultrafines aren’t specifically regulated by any state or federal air quality standards.

Such particles are found in both vehicle and plane emissions. In fact, the UW researchers observed a higher concentration of ultrafines by roadways than by the airport.

But for the first time, researchers found a crucial difference in the type of ultrafines emitted by cars and trucks versus jet planes.

A higher proportion of the ultrafine particles (UFPs) in jet emissions are so small they can penetrate the central nervous system when inhaled, the report said.

Communities under flight paths are exposed to those “ultra-ultrafines” when planes take off and land, researchers found.

ultrafine particles tend to agglomerate as they travel through the air — they stick together and become larger particles, which aren’t able to pass from the airways into the bloodstream. That’s typically what happens near busy roads.

But the super-small particles emitted by airplanes are forced directly downward by air currents and wing vortexes so rapidly that they haven’t agglomerated by the time they reach the ground

“The concern is that these very small particles may react differently within the body,” Austin said. “They may cross tissue barriers that larger particles can’t cross.”

There’s another reason for extra concern about ultra-ultrafine particles from plane emissions, the study said. People tend to spend a relatively small part of their day on the road — but people who live near airports are potentially exposed to the pollutants throughout the day and night.

“In terms of their ultrafine exposure, it’s like people under that flight path are standing in the roadway,” said Dr. Joel Kaufman, a University of Washington epidemiologist unaffiliated with the airport study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regan should be closed IMO. Ultra fine particles dumping all over the city is giving us all a higher risk of cancer.

Agree. Except it’s not all over the city, is it? It’s very well concentrated in a tight corridor. There’s some historic justice in the areas closer to and EOTP not being affected.

Also there are massive no fly zones — draw large circles around the VP residence, the White House. And then there’s no need to fly over adjacent neighborhoods since you want to be closer to the river. So most of the city is fine.

Wind carries it all over.

True. But very diluted and dispersed, with much longer time to reach the ground. Under the flight path 10 miles from the airport it’s almost like some is leaf blowing this pollution straight into your airways.

Think about how long it would take a 0.1 micron particle to gently float on the breeze and down to the ground farther away vs. being pushed down directly under the flight path. A study suggests over an hour or more vs. 10 mins.

A good analogy is a smoke from a fire, much different if standing next to the fire pit (your hair and clothes smell right?) vs. several miles away

Forgot that they also cluster together as they are carried by the wind so by the time they drop on you say in Cleveland Park they aren’t harmful because the can’t cross into the bloodstream etc. is what the studies are implying I think

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regan should be closed IMO. Ultra fine particles dumping all over the city is giving us all a higher risk of cancer.

Agree. Except it’s not all over the city, is it? It’s very well concentrated in a tight corridor. There’s some historic justice in the areas closer to and EOTP not being affected.

Also there are massive no fly zones — draw large circles around the VP residence, the White House. And then there’s no need to fly over adjacent neighborhoods since you want to be closer to the river. So most of the city is fine.

Wind carries it all over.

True. But very diluted and dispersed, with much longer time to reach the ground. Under the flight path 10 miles from the airport it’s almost like some is leaf blowing this pollution straight into your airways.

Think about how long it would take a 0.1 micron particle to gently float on the breeze and down to the ground farther away vs. being pushed down directly under the flight path. A study suggests over an hour or more vs. 10 mins.

A good analogy is a smoke from a fire, much different if standing next to the fire pit (your hair and clothes smell right?) vs. several miles away

Forgot that they also cluster together as they are carried by the wind so by the time they drop on you say in Cleveland Park they aren’t harmful because the can’t cross into the bloodstream etc. is what the studies are implying I think

This is debatable, based on numerous articles from 2022: https://www.airportwatch.org.uk/2022/02/ultrafine-particles-from-aircraft-engines-can-spread-miles-downwind-of-airports-and-can-endanger-lives/

[Anonymous]

if you're talking about the Elena Austin study from 2021, here's what it said:

The Mobile ObserVations of Ultrafine Particles study was a two-year project to analyze potential air quality impacts of ultrafine particles (UFPs) from aircraft traffic for communities near an international airport. The study assessed UFP concentrations within 10 miles of the airport in the directions of aircraft flight. Over the course of four seasons, this study conducted a mobile sampling scheme to collect time-resolved measures of UFP, CO2, and black carbon (BC) concentrations, as well as UFP size distributions. Primary findings were that UFPs were associated with both roadway traffic and aircraft sources, with the highest UFP counts found on the major roadway (I-5).

People should be attentive to the potential risks of ultrafine particles, but it's dishonest to pretend it's unique to aircraft or flight paths, or that the findings for airport-adjacent communities automatically apply for communities like Cabin John that are 12 miles from DCA. Living in DC we're more aware than most of how people with an agenda like to trot out factoids without providing the full context.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:if you're talking about the Elena Austin study from 2021, here's what it said:

The Mobile ObserVations of Ultrafine Particles study was a two-year project to analyze potential air quality impacts of ultrafine particles (UFPs) from aircraft traffic for communities near an international airport. The study assessed UFP concentrations within 10 miles of the airport in the directions of aircraft flight. Over the course of four seasons, this study conducted a mobile sampling scheme to collect time-resolved measures of UFP, CO2, and black carbon (BC) concentrations, as well as UFP size distributions. Primary findings were that UFPs were associated with both roadway traffic and aircraft sources, with the highest UFP counts found on the major roadway (I-5).

People should be attentive to the potential risks of ultrafine particles, but it's dishonest to pretend it's unique to aircraft or flight paths, or that the findings for airport-adjacent communities automatically apply for communities like Cabin John that are 12 miles from DCA. Living in DC we're more aware than most of how people with an agenda like to trot out factoids without providing the full context.

Here’s what the study also says — UFP in jet fuel are different and finer. The only agenda is to be informed, then you do as you want for your health but don’t gaslight prospective buyers with children. People worry about BPA in Tupperware but are going to pay millions to suck on a diesel exhaust? No thanks without being fully aware that’s what I’m doing and why. You are the one reading selectively to gaslight.

But for the first time, researchers found a crucial difference in the type of ultrafines emitted by cars and trucks versus jet planes.

A higher proportion of the ultrafine particles (UFPs) in jet emissions are so small they can penetrate the central nervous system when inhaled, the report said.

Communities under flight paths are exposed to those “ultra-ultrafines” when planes take off and land, researchers found.

[Anonymous]

And yes, the same study says about 15km of the flight path from the airport. Cabin John is well within it. But much better off than the Palisades as far as the DCA goes.

And yes, it says roadway and under the flight path are very different for the reasons explained in this thread. I can’t believe you pulled out one paragraph and ignored the rest, and then called out people for reporting fully and truthfully.

[Anonymous]

I live in Sumner and the airplane noise doesn't bother us at all. I have never understood all the uproar about it. Seems if you complain about noise, move out to Poolesville.

The only loud noise I hear are the helicopters going to/from the Naval Observatory...but that was a choice of mine for living close by.

I have never been woken up by airplane noise and the noise has never once impacted my day to day life negatively. People just complain to complain.

Also..whoever is mentioned the stress on your body. What freaking planet are you from??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live next to Glen Echo and are sometimes in the flight path. Your brain learns to tune it out, just like it does with other background noise. I can be in the backyard and not notice it unless a friend who is visiting brings it up.

The only time it's obvious is when it's a certain level of clouds so the planes have to fly really low below them on approach, but that's not common.

I used to live in an apartment next to a bunch of bars. Every morning at 5am, trucks would come to pick up the trash cans of glass beer bottles and taht was quite a sound. I noticed it the first week I lived there, then tuned it out after a week as my brain adjusted.

Same with road noise, which you'll see at some neighborhoods in Glen Echo or nearby -- you can hear the hum of the Beltway, but only if you really listen for it or are not used to it.

The brain's an amazing thing.

The pollution that comes with those planes is something you can’t do anything about though, and the evidence that it’s very harmful in the long term is overwhelming. It’s stuff like heart and lung disease, dementia, asthma in children, cognitive difficulties, shortened lifespan. None of it from the noise, just the ultra fine particles released by the planes and pushed straight down at and into you on closer to departure and take off areas. The noise poses it’s own risks and they only abate with hearing loss that comes in older age because of that noise.
Shortened life span and chronic disease, no thanks.

I feel sorry for how you live your life