Traffic Noise In Lakewood

The city of Lakewood has a lot to offer its residents. Good schools, beautiful parks, excellent library, great city services, vibrant downtown, wonderful restaurant scene, the list goes on. These things make Lakewood a desirable place to live and create a good quality of life. However, that good quality of life has been diminished in recent years by excessive traffic noise.

Illegal and defective exhaust systems on cars, trucks and motorcycles have increased dramatically over the last few years and have reached a point where it has become a nuisance at best and a health hazard at worst. In 2011, the World Health Organization released a report titled, “Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise” “The authors concluded that ‘there is overwhelming evidence that exposure to environmental noise has adverse effects on the health of the population’ and ranked traffic noise second among environmental threats to public health (the first being air pollution). The authors also noted that while other forms of pollution are decreasing, noise pollution is increasing.

How does it affect your health? The Australian Academy of Science reports that, “Exposure to prolonged or excessive noise has been shown to cause a range of health problems ranging from stress, poor concentration, productivity losses in the workplace, and communication difficulties and fatigue from lack of sleep, to more serious issues such as cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, tinnitus and hearing loss.”

Health issues aside, excessive noise has a direct effect on property values and is the number one reason people cite as a reason to move.

We live in a population dense city that has a lot of traffic so some noise is to be expected. It is the illegal and defective exhaust systems that are exacerbating the problem. Sound data taken on Clifton Boulevard in August of 2019 shows that a vehicle with a defective or illegal exhaust system drove by an average of once every 10 minutes. The result is a cacophony that makes simple things like holding a conversation difficult if not impossible.

Would you like to improve the quality of life in Lakewood? Contact the mayor or Lakewood City Council and request that they do something about it.

Tony Bruzas has been an engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center for 20+ years and a Lakewood resident for 10 years.