Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C., May 23, 2016 – If you live in Waco, Texas, your neighbor maneuvering a gas lawn mower in the middle of the night likely wouldn’t violate the decibel limit, which is eight times louder than the typical nighttime limit in the United States.

The large difference is just one example of the diversity of laws regulating noise throughout the United States. The Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, a national non-profit based in Vermont that gathers noise related resources and advocates for quieter public spaces, has now compiled a database of noise ordinances for nearly 500 of the largest communities in the U.S. The goal is to make it easier for researchers and lawmakers to understand what regulations exist and which ones work the best.

“I’ve analyzed ordinances from 491 communities so far,” said Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. He will present his database at the 171st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held May 23-27 in Salt Lake City, by which time he hopes to have gotten up to at least 500 communities.

So far, the communities in the database generally have more than 60,000 residents. In total, they represent about a third of the U.S. population.

Excessive noise is a common complaint from community residents, from the cities to the suburbs, Blomberg said. His initial inquiries suggest that around 3-8 percent of calls to the police concern loud sounds. Going forward he plans to more systematically survey law enforcement agencies to determine how often noise ordinances are violated and whether certain wording makes it easier for police officers to enforce the law.

The database of noise ordinances is a good start, Blomberg said, because it displays how exceptionally varied our approaches to noise pollution are. The ordinances include decibel-based standards, plainly audible standards, nuisance standards, quiet zones and restrictions based on zoning, setbacks, time-of-day regulations, and outright bans on some noise sources, such as gas-powered leaf blowers. Many communities rely on a combination of these regulatory approaches.

The most common approach was a nuisance standard, which appeared in 85 percent of the 491 ordinances. The nuisance standard is usually based on what a “reasonable” person would find offensive. The interpretation of “reasonable” is left to law enforcement officers and the courts.

Decibel levels, which are a standardized measure of sound pressure, appear in 55 percent of noise ordinances in the database. While decibel levels may be a more scientific measure of noise, they’re also difficult to enforce, Blomberg said.

Police officers must be trained in the use of noise meters and they have to have their calibrated equipment with them to measure sound levels. In some cases, they may not be able to wait long enough to gather the data necessary to say whether a noise source is out of compliance.

For this reason, some communities are updating their laws to simplify enforcement, Blomberg said. For example, in 2005 New York City added a plainly audible noise standard. The regulation states that if a noise source is plainly audible at a certain distance, it is in violation.

“All a police officer would need to enforce the law is her or her ears and a tape measure,” Blomberg said.

Blomberg said most all of the noise ordinances he’s looked at have limitations. Some reveal the priorities of the community.

“Many times the special interests of a community are visible in its noise laws,” he said. For example, some communities exempt shooting ranges or church bells from the law. “In Oklahoma and Texas, noise regulations do more to protect oil producers from their neighbor’s complaints than they do to protect the neighbor’s health and welfare. In Austin, Texas, it’s the music venues that are protected,” he said.

Blomberg hopes the database can serve as a resource to the acoustics standards community, which is currently working on writing a model noise ordinance. He also hopes community members, lawmakers, and businesses will find the database helpful. When it’s complete, it will be uploaded to the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse’s website at http://www.nonoise.org.

Presentation #1aNS2, " Analysis of 500 noise ordinances," by Leslie D. Blomberg will be take place on Monday, May 23, 2016, at 9:05 AM MDT in Salon B/C. The abstract can be found by searching for the presentation number here: http://acousticalsociety.org/content/spring-meeting-itinerary-planner.

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ABOUT THE MEETINGThe 171st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) will be held May 23-27, 2016, at the Salt Lake Marriott Downtown at City Creek Hotel. It will feature more than 900 presentations on sound and its applications in physics, engineering, music, architecture and medicine. Reporters are invited to cover the meeting remotely or attend in person for free. USEFUL LINKSMain meeting website: http://acousticalsociety.org/content/spring-2016-meetingItinerary planner and technical program: http://acousticalsociety.org/content/spring-meeting-itinerary-planner

WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOMIn the coming weeks, ASA’s World Wide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which are 400-900 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video. You can visit the site, beginning in early May, at (http://acoustics.org/current-meeting). PRESS REGISTRATIONWe will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact John Arnst ([email protected], 301-209-3096) who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information. LIVE MEDIA WEBCASTA press briefing featuring a selection of newsworthy research will be webcast live from the conference on Tuesday, May 24. Topics and time of webcast to be announced. ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAThe Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org.

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Meeting Link: 171st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA)