Tag: article

“Noise Pollution: A Modern Plague” Response

This journal article was a very good-follow up to the New Yorker article that graphed and plotted the noise complaints in all neighborhoods in the city; in other words, it was nice to combine the statistics with the hard, scientific facts about the damage that noise pollution can do to us. It even discussed noise in cities just a few centuries ago and empires that existed a few millennia in the past, so it is not as if noise is a new issue. However, with our increasing population and urbanization, it is important to note that deafening sound will become more frequent and unpleasant unless we do something about it now. In fact, cities have become synonymous with noise havens and the suburbs and countryside have been signified by peaceful, tranquil abodes. To be honest, cities will always be louder than these areas because of the sheer density of people and buildings, but the decibel levels that they reach are just obscene, and nobody should have to be subjected to them.

The “Adverse Health Effects of Noise” section was extremely detailed and perfectly outlined how humans are harmed by noise; as I mentioned in my last response, many animals have more sensitive ears than we do, so these effects are multiplied significantly for them. Other than the obvious effects of hearing impairment and sleep disturbances, and other physiological effects such as endocrine and circulatory system issues, noise pollution causes many psychological problems as well, impacting a person’s ability to speak, think sanely, perform simple tasks, and even interact with others. At first, I thought that these were too indirectly related to and thus extrapolated too far from noise pollution, but after a second glance, they are perfectly reasonable; a person’s health is holistic and made up of many components that must work together in unison, and so if one sense (such as hearing, in this case) is affected, everything else must be as well.

The authors conclude that “part of the solution may require federal or state legislation aimed at supporting local efforts or the restoration of federal funding for the Office of Noise Abatement and Control” (Goines and Hagler 293). However, the government can only pass so many laws to combat noise; personally, I have noticed buses and cars continue to blare their horns even though there is a $350 fine for doing so, and this probably means that enforcement of the pre-existing laws is just too lax. Excessive pessimism does not help either. As discussed in many of our other classes, education is the most powerful force, since people will develop personal connections to their environment, and they will then receive incentives to save it not just for them, but for their descendants and the rest of the ecosystems that they belong to.

“New York City Trends in Air Pollution and its Health Consequences” Response

Although New York City does not have as much air pollution as some other cities in the country, like Los Angeles, or across the globe, like Shanghai, it is still a problem that is serious enough to cause many deaths every year. However, considerable progress has been made to filter the air and make the city more livable for those who suffer from respiratory diseases, particularly asthma. The article mentions how “as of winter 2012-2013, wintertime SO­2 levels have declined by 69% while levels of nickel in fine particulate matter…have declined by 35%” (New York City Trends in Air Pollution and its Health Consequences 1). This is especially due to regulations to limit the amount of No. 4 and No. 6 heating oil that contained these harmful particulates and to replace them with cleaner air sources. Furthermore, mortality rates have decreased as well: it is estimated that there are “an average of 780 fewer PM2.5_ attributable deaths per year than would have remained at 2005-2007 levels, or a reduction of 25%” (New York City Trends in Air Pollution and its Health Consequences 9).

One of the main things that I noticed with the report was that the vast majority of the reductions in the concentrations of these chemicals could be found in Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, but many of the outer boroughs were left untouched in the graphs. That is not to say that Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island do not have their own mix of pollutants to deal with, given their proximity to the three main airports that serve our metropolitan area. However, these portions of Manhattan and the Bronx contain the most densely populated areas in the city and likely the poorest as well.

The only issue that I had with the reports was that the findings were done over an exceptionally short period: from the winter of 2008-2009 to the winter of 2012-2013, especially since this included the anomalously warm and dry winter of 2011-2012. The effects of policies that were passed decades ago should have been looked at as well, but at the same rate, there might not have been as much industrialization or pollution as there has been in recent years. Nevertheless, much work still has to be done, considering there is an outgoing outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, but we should commend ourselves for what we have done collectively to combat air pollution thus far.

“Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson” Response

Robert Nelson

After reading Sanderson’s and Brown’s piece, the main idea that I felt that they were aiming at was that there is an inverse relationship between urbanization and biodiversity. Humans are willing to extract nearly anything from their environments in order to support their ever-growing needs, and New York City is a prime example. Its state today is virtually unrecognizable compared to when it was still inhabited by the Lenape Indians. This is shown in the statistical charts that the authors provided, which demonstrate that human-dedicated areas constituted 0.1% of Manhattan’s total area and natural areas constituted 99.9% in 1609; a complete reversal of this can be seen in 2004, when human-dedicated areas represented 97% of Manhattan’s total area and natural areas were just a mere 3% (Sanderson and Brown, 552-553).

In my IDC class last term, our very first group project was very similar to the Mannahatta piece, since it involved us going to the Financial District and comparing the present area with the ecosystems that used to inhabit it. We were assigned certain portions of the area, and had to go to every intersection to document where salt marshes, estuaries, beaches, grasslands, and other ecological zones were once located. We were all astounded by how much the landscape of Manhattan, and New York City in general, has been transformed ever since the Dutch and English colonized the area. Of course, they never would have chosen to settle here if there had not been such an abundance of natural resources, but depleting them at almost inconceivable rates disrupts the natural equilibrium of the area.

Many conservationists have been trying to restore this before we consume at a rate faster than we can produce. “William Cullen Bryant and Horace Greeley, among others, led the charge to create Central Park on rocky and swampy lands in the middle of the island” (Sanderson and Brown 547), but this park is still artificial, as it was built along the confines of the grid system and not natural boundaries. Also, I know that people like Jane Jacobs were against Robert Moses building expressways through heavily populated areas, but I feel that she was more concerned about people than the countless other organisms and species that call Manhattan home. As in the last reading, we need to collectively join forces and get people to feel personally responsible for the well-being of their residences in order for us to protect the rich biodiversity of our metropolitan area for many generations to come.

 

 

“Biodiversity Conservation and the Extinction of Experience” Response

Robert Nelson

While reading James R. Miller’s piece, I was able to connect with a work that I read in my previous IDC class (The Peopling of New York) called “The Metropolis and Mental Life” by Georg Simmel. Simmel’s piece mentioned how people who live in cities eventually take on a blasé, indifferent perspective towards their surroundings since urban areas are filled with so many events and stimuli that it would be impossible to keep track of them all at once. Miller appears to add on to this theory by stating how urbanites feel disconnected with nature and often do not feel obligated to correct or at least improve some of the ecological issues that they encounter on a daily basis. As shown in the quote “…most Americans can identify hundreds of corporate logos, but fewer than ten native plant species” (Miller 430), they tend to be more concerned about finished materialistic products as opposed to their natural sources.

I agree with Miller that this has been caused by the fact that scientists, especially conservationists, have been very condemning and pessimistic when talking about ecological problems. From a psychological standpoint, this makes people feel helpless and worrisome, and leads them to believe that there is nothing that they can do to help their environments. If they are talked to from a more positive and enlightening approach as well as actively included in the process of beautifying and reconstructing their cities, they will feel more inclined to do so. In other words, bringing into the spotlight the biodiversity of the cities and encouraging their inhabitants to preserve it will be more successful than highlighting the consequences of continuous human harm to nature.

Despite the fact that there is still a lot of work to be done, I believe that considerable progress has been made to bring city-dwellers closer to nature. In addition to the green rooftops being built to reduce the urban heat island effect, I learned in one of my previous classes that in Harare, Zimbabwe, buildings are being constructed like anthills both in shape and material so that they can be cooled down by themselves without using fans or air conditioners. Such biomimicry can definitely garner the interest of the general public, and ordinary people can change their lives by simply observing how plants and animals have adapted to some of the obstacles that they face and recreating them for themselves. Overall, I thought that Miller’s piece did an excellent job at identifying and proposing solutions to the detachment between people in cities and their environments, and I especially liked how it tied ecology with psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other social sciences.