City living: How noisy is too noisy?

Amanda: This is The Forefront, a Toronto Metropolitan University podcast that explores ideas for cities. I’m Amanda Cupido. So here’s the problem: cities are noisy. From traffic to outdoor events to your upstairs neighbour, who might love tap dancing, noise is everywhere. A 2017 study found that 93% of people in Toronto are trying to sleep in environments with noise levels that are far above what our brains need to get some good rest. This might sound like the kind of problem with no solution—I mean, lots of people means lots of sound, right? Well, if you were living in a big city during the COVID-19 lockdown, then you might have learned that it’s not always the case.

Ingrid: During COVID in March and April of 2020, suddenly, all the vehicles left the road and we stopped moving around. And I realised just that cities aren't loud, vehicles are loud, and I could hear the birds I could sleep with my window open. And it was just a lovely feeling. 

Amanda: This is Ingrid Buday. She’s been living in the same downtown Toronto condo for more than 10 years. For her, the peace and quiet of the early lockdowns were a nice change of pace. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t last.

Ingrid: And it really peaked for me one night when I was lying in bed. And it was about three in the morning and I got woken up by a motorcycle. And because the roads were empty, I was able to hear this one engine. And because I know my environment, I looked at my watch. And I timed it for 10 minutes, and I knew that it was going west it was travelling westward, so I was able to kind of follow it in my mind until it left my hearing and that was about 10 minutes, which I looked then on Google Maps, which was about seven kilometres away. 

Amanda: Seven kilometres. Can you believe that? For context, that’s about the distance between the CN Tower and the High Park Zoo in Toronto. 

Ingrid: And I realised that was a long way away, and it was one single engine that was creating that sort of drop in my soundscape. And what made me think of it was how when the streets are full, and people are going at 60, 70, 80, 100, 120 kilometres an hour, and we've got 1000s of them. That what one engine contributes to our soundscape, and then when you multiply that by 1000s, where our noise actually comes from and how far away it comes from, which is what really struck me.  

Amanda: Ingrid decided that she wanted to do something about this problem that was affecting her and millions of people around her. Her first step was to try calling 311. If you're out outside of Toronto — 311 is the number you call to report non-emergency city issues. But that didn’t go quite as well as she had hoped.

Ingrid: The responses from 311 were, can you get an image of the licence plate? And it's like, I'm in bed, it's 3am. And I'm in my condo, how am I ever going to get a picture? Plus, even if you're on the side of the road, and you hear a loud vehicle going by, can you whip your phone out, activate your camera and take a picture in time to catch the licence plate? No. 

Amanda: That’s when she decided to take things into her own hands.

Ingrid: So I bought a noise metre and I wanted something that would literally stand up in court or up that would help with rigorous science. And so I started taking noise readings from my own balcony and from other people's balconies, and the more I talk about noise, or the more noise I make about noise? The more people come out and say yes, this is terrible. This is, this is horrible. Come downtown, come onto my balcony. 

Amanda: Over the last couple of years, Ingrid has taken hundreds of readings from all over the city. She has thousands of hours of noise recordings. She knows that gathering that tangible information is the only way to take on this issue. 

Ingrid: So many people that have come out and said thank you, Ingrid, thank you for taking a data driven approach to this, because otherwise it's an emotional argument. And an emotional argument never changes anything. But data can change. 

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Amanda: Now, Ingrid isn’t the only one who thinks we have a choice when it comes to noise pollution.

Tor: There's been concerns and writing about noise pollution as a, as a nuisance of the city for well over 100 years. 

Amanda: This is Dr. Tor Oiamo. He’s an assistant professor in TMU’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. And he’s one of Canada’s leading noise researchers.

Tor: One person's noise is another person’s sound I guess, but in my field, we tend to define it as something that can be disturbing to regular or daily activities like talking or relaxing or something that registers on an annoyance scale.

Amanda: But Dr. Oiamo's research has found that excessive noise pollution can be more than just annoying. It can seriously disturb your sleep. Which can lead to physical health concerns.

Tor: Some of those health outcomes we're starting to document with respect to noise too and this is where things like metabolic diseases like diabetes are getting more common, even strokes. The final one, along with noise annoyance and sleep disturbance is increased prevalence of ischemic heart disease, which are basically heart attacks or cardiovascular disease that can lead to heart attacks.

Amanda: That’s pretty scary. Dr.Oriamo says there’s strong evidence for a dose response. It means that the longer you’re exposed to excessive noise, the higher the risk of those serious outcomes. But how much noise is too much noise?

Tor:  There's different ways to define it, but a short term goal in the WHO Europe region is to limit lifetime noise levels to 55 decibels, which is where we see those cardiovascular health effects starting, so 53 decibels is when we see ischemic heart disease risks from traffic noise exposure started going up.

Amanda: Back in 2017, Dr.Oriamo collaborated with Toronto Public Health to create a report on noise levels around the city. For one week, they put noise metres at more than 200 locations around Toronto. Some were sensitive sites, like schools and long term care homes. Others were areas known for producing lots of noise, like big concert venues or the CNE. 

Tor: What we found was, as expected, you know, an excessive level of exposure across the city.  

Well over 60% of the city's population are exposed to nighttime noise levels above 55. A concerningly large proportion above 65 decibels even as well. And then the long term goal for the WHO is 45 decibels, this is the kind of quiet where you can have your window open and you won't be disturbed. You know, you'll sort of just hear some basically trees rustling right outside your window will will bring you to 45 decibels kind of thing. But, you know, over 90% of the city were exposed to nighttime noise levels above that. 

Amanda: The report also uncovered a surprising relationship between noise and income inequality. Lower income people are more likely to live near big roads—which means they’re exposed to more noise. 

Tor: Obviously, the traffic noise modelling shows, you know where there's more traffic, there's more noise, but the traffic modelling data did show pretty significant environmental equity problem where lower income areas have a much higher likelihood of having excessive exposures. And that's something I expect is more common in North American cities, we haven't seen a lot of it being analysed.

Amanda: Once you start thinking about noise, you realise how much of an effect it has. 

Tor: This has direct implications for for students too, and, you know, just our campus as a bit of a microcosm for for the urban environment, but in, in our case, really, it's, right in the thick of it, like the monitor that I had at Dundas Square, thinking it might have actually recorded the highest noise level across the whole city because it was just so constantly loud the entire time that it was there. 

Amanda: But this isn't just about Toronto. The same goes for any other big city in Canada — and a lot of big cities around the world.

Tor: Part of it is just people don’t really feel like that something that they have an option or control over, like that’s kind of a coping mechanism maybe to just try to ignore it and forget about it, and make excuses like yeah it’s just nothing. Nothing to do about it. That’s just how, how the city is. But we, we know better now, and I think we will do better in the future. 

Amanda: But what does that better future look like? To Dr. Oiamo, it’s about combining short term and long term solutions.

Tor: So on one side, the bylaw regulatory instrument is needed to to deal with, you know, acute excessive noise events to enforce it and penalise people or companies whenever wherever they break the law, I guess. But then on the other hand, we need a strategy to to address this more on a neighbourhood city scale, where there's there's overall objectives to reduce population level exposure.

Amanda: In the short term, he says we need to set up better structures. That way, people like Ingrid can shut down those disturbances in their neighbourhoods that are keeping them from a good night’s rest.

Tor: But that doesn't address the big issue, which is, how it wraps into development, how it wraps into neighbourhood planning, how it wraps into, you know, re revamping or reorienting or redesigning existing neighbourhoods, in some cases, if that's what's needed. Of course, there's a limit to what can be done when the environment when the city has already been built, but getting these things integrated and rolled into, you know, the city master plan, for example, is going to be important over the long term. 

Amanda: In the meantime, Ingrid is working her hardest to make Toronto a peaceful place to live.

Ingrid: I would say 90% of the noise, maybe even more of the, of the noise that is created that is unnecessary, and purely for vanity purposes is made by a small percentage of the population. And that people need to become aware of noise and report it. 

I think, you know, it's kind of like a toothache. You have a toothache. And I mean, there was a time that I didn't have any benefits. And so I got a toothache and I and I was like, Oh, I gotta go see the dentist. And then it went away, it's because I got used to the pain. And then I finally got it looked at. And it was like, suddenly, I realised I didn't have a headache all the time, because the pain went away. And I think that's what COVID did for many people is it kind of woke us up to, wait a second. We don't need to have this kind of noise all the time, do we? Do we have a choice? 

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Amanda: Before we go, here’s a final word from Dr. Oiamo about how TMU has supported his work.

Tor: Just the location has been a very important part of it for me, you know, we're part of the city and can therefore also be part of the part of the solution. But beyond that practical applied collaboration with with government and industry, that's definitely something that working at TMU has, has proven to support and even accelerate the work and then of course, just from my perspective, access to students that have you know, multi or interdisciplinary experience who can help with technical work there but also are, are trained and doing research out in the environment and collecting data, I have great help from all different different parts of it, different aspects of it.

Amanda: This podcast was created for alumni and friends by University Advancement at Toronto Metropolitan University. Special thanks to our guests on today’s episode: Doctor Tor Oiamo and Ingrid Buday. This podcast was produced by me, Amanda Cupido and Emily Morantz. Katia Galati is the editor for the show. All of us are proud grads of TMU! To learn more about Noise Pollution, and for more episodes of this podcast and others, visit torontomu.ca/alumni/podcasts.

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