When the Department of Transportation mapped noise across the country last year, it found that 97 percent of the population is subjected to man-made noise. Experts are pointing to rising complaints, more lawsuits, more people with hearing problems, and studies showing that noise has negative health effects. A study co-authored by ESPM professor Rachel Morello-Frosch found that people in poorer and racially segregated neighborhoods live with higher levels of noise, and communities where at least 3 in 4 residents are black had median nighttime noise levels of 46.3 decibels — four decibels louder than communities with no black residents.
SF Chronicle | May 08, 2018
Bigger, more intense forest fires, longer droughts, warmer ocean temperatures and an ever shrinking snowpack in the Sierra Nevada are “unequivocal” evidence of the ruinous domino-effects that climate change is having on California, a new California Environmental Protection Agency report states. “If I were going to look across North America, ground zero for climate change is the Arctic. It is just changing really, really rapidly,” noted ESPM professor Steven Beissinger. “But California is an important laboratory to understand the effects of climate change on biodiversity.”