Category Archives: Environment

Turn Up the Quiet: Moving Toward a Noise Free World
The Quest for Sonic Bliss and a Good Night’s Sleep

Environment, Food & Health

HEARING-LOSS


NEWBORN-HEARING-SCREENING

It’s an epidemic, and it’s all around us. It’s in our bedrooms, in our rec rooms and living rooms, in our cars and even in our baby’s crib. It causes stress, isolation, sleep deprivation and increases our blood pressure. And it is literally making us deaf.
What is this monster? It’s noise. Noise is responsible for more than one-third of all cases of hearing loss, a life-altering disability that is eminently preventable. Hearing loss is Canada’s third leading chronic disability, affecting more than 3 million people — and the leading cause is noise, responsible for more than one third of cases.
According to a recently published study conducted by Timothy C. Hain, a Professor of Neurology and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois …

We are steadily losing our hearing due to over-exposure to noise at an earlier age than ever before. The number of people with hearing loss who are between the ages 18 and 44 increased 17 per cent. The greatest loss in hearing is found in people 45 to 64 — 20 years younger than expected and the reason: over exposure to noise.


Children are also feeling the effects of living in a noisier world and are especially vulnerable. According to the study, 15% of school children have hearing loss, increasing to 30% in young adults entering the work force.
In this month’s issue of Utne Magazine, writer David Schimke explores our quest for the creative and natural soundscape all around us — the music of nature, the laughter of friends and neighbours, and our own inner voice.

I didn’t know that cheaper housing was statistically linked to mind-numbing noise pollution: that city planners insensitive to the needs of lower-middle-class citizens typically build two-lane highways through neighbourhoods designed for the horse and buggy, or that airport runways literally begin and end in people’s backyards. When I first moved to the city, I didn’t expect that construction crews and street sweepers would rattle and hum before sunup, while schoolchildren and working families tried in vain to rest.


According to the U.S. 2001 Census Survey, 11.6 million households reported that street or traffic noise was bothersome, and an additional 4.5 million said it was so bad they wanted to move.
Schimke reports that there are 40 million cases of hearing loss in the United States, with 10 million cases attributable to excess noise. Besides contributing to deafness, at just 85 decibels (a human voice averages 65 decibels, while a hair dryer clocks in at 95), high sound levels lead to stress (the human pain threshold is 120 decibels), indigestion, high blood pressure, weakening of the immune system, and hypertension.
The relationship between noise and the natural soundscape is similar to the relationship between litter and the landscape. We need to get people to understand that, to create a new aural ethic. Dissonance is not inherent in the human condition. Noise induced hearing loss doesn’t have to happen to you. For now, practice safe listening — turn it down and use protection.

Sustainable Communities: A Bright Future And A Glowing Past

Environment, Vancouver

ONE-DAY-VANCOUVER

One Day is a City of Vancouver initiative dedicated to making incremental changes in energy consumption that can be sustained over time.
Whether it’s for personal fitness, to be part of the solution for future generations, or to help Vancouver become recognized as a world model for how an urban centre can manage energy consumption, the folks at onedayvancouver.ca are there to help you find ways to take that first step.
For instance, in your home you can …

  • Install compact fluorescent light bulbs
  • Install low-flow showerheads
  • Set back your thermostat at night
  • Look for the EnergyStar label when purchasing new appliances
  • Take advantage of BC Hydro Power Smart programmes and incentives
  • Turn the lights out when you leave the room

On the road, you can cut down on your energy consumption by …

  • Leaving your car at home, just one day a week
  • Walking or cycling to work or school
  • Taking transit
  • Joining a car co-op

Cities are for people (not cars). John Naisbitt (author of High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning) had it right: the more technology distances us (telecommuting, distance education, e-mail, videoconferencing), the more we crave human contact. Today, walkable communities, stroll districts, green transit, multi-modal transportation, urban density … all point in the direction of people-centered planning.
Cities are for all people. For cities of the future, tolerance is passé; inclusion is critical. Young people are moving to cities where people ‘mix’: in clubs, at church, and in neighbourhoods. In Paris, housing projects require a set-aside of several units only for artists. Other cities (such as Vancouver) require that 10 to 15 perecent of all new residential buildings are affordable housing. When integration occurs, it can be transformative and magical.
Healthy cities are important, too: cities that are committed to diesel-hydrogen transit buses, more bike racks on the front of buses, more walking and biking trails within cities (not just outside them) and greater commitment to green / open spaces contribute to sustainability.
Much of our future, and our children’s future, depends on making our cities ‘sustainable’. The time is here to enable even greater access to community services and recreation; to enhance our social prosperity; to minimize our need to travel across broad stretches of the Lower Mainland in our daily commute, and to build sustainable and affordable mass transit for all; to ensure safety within our communities; to provide a clear city centre focus in each of our communities; and to protect and preserve the key features of our city environment — our historic buildings, nature conservation, and the parks, beaches and woods of our city’s natural landscape.

An Idea On The Shelf: Cancer Prevention In Canada

Environment

CANCER-IN-CANADA

In 2005, why isn’t addressing the environmental causes of cancer in the Canadian government’s official cancer control strategy? Andrea Smith, writing in The Dominion, reminds us that in 2002 the federal government announced it had devised the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control, a federal initiative designed to improve the co-ordination and delivery of treatment, prevention, palliative services and research in Canada.
To date, though, the federal agency developed to implement the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control has yet to put into place any sort of co-ordinated cancer control strategy, and the work of the National Cancer Leadership Forum (NCLF) — an organization representing cancer care and advocacy agencies across the country — remains an idea left forgotten on a dusty shelf somewhere in Ottawa, deep within the bowels of government.
While Paul Martin’s federal Liberal government dithers, this year alone approximately 68,000 Canadians will die from cancer.

Cruise Control? Cruise Ship Industry Pollution In Canada

BC Politics, Canada, Environment

CRUISE-SHIP-POLLUTION
Alaska-bound cruise ships in dock, at Vancouver’s harbourfront Canada Place terminal

What images spring to mind when you imagine a northern cruise vacation? Crystal clear water, teaming with sea life; humpback whales frolicking for your viewing pleasure; or perhaps just the vastness of British Columbia’s pristine coast, and a wild azure blue ocean untouched by human pollution.
These images contradict the current reality of the cruise industry.
A single cruise ship discharges approximately 1.3 million litres of waste water per day, more than the port city of Haines, Alaska.
In an article published in The Dominion, writers Yuill Herbert and Karen Gorecki report that:

  • The American environmental group, the Blue Water Network, estimates that 77% of all ship waste comes from cruise ships
  • Two billion pounds of trash is dumped into the world’s oceans each year and 24% of that waste comes from cruise ships
  • 14 million kilograms of waste was produced in 2000 on the Alaska-Canada route alone
  • Cruise ships have accrued over $60 million in environmental fines over the last five years in the U.S. Yet, in Canada, due to a lack of monitoring and enforcement there have been no fines, despite the fact that these same ships visit our waters
  • Greenhouse gas emissions of international ships are excluded from the national emissions inventories, a loophole in the Kyoto Accord which benefits cruise ship lines

The Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group’s report, Ripple Effects: The Need to Assess the Impacts of Cruise Ships in Victoria B.C. not only serves to reinforce the points made by Herbert and Gorecki, among other findings the report’s authors learned that cruise “ships burn fuel that has sulphur content 90% higher than that used by cars.”