For the past couple of weeks my team and I, The Sound Brigade, have been conducting an experiment within the 7th grade classrooms of Boston Latin Academy. We are currently participating in the Lexus Eco Challenge for our AP Environmental Science class with Ms. Stafford. We chose a topic that affects our environment within and outside of school. Noise pollution is the regular exposure to high sound levels that may lead to harmful effects in humans or other living organisms. While sound pollution may not be affecting us as much as CO2 emissions or global warming, it is affecting the learning environment of our students here at our very own school.
We realized that some classrooms of the seventh grade had been modified to accommodate students with hearing impairment. These modifications include carpet floors and low ceilings. Most rooms in the school have high ceilings with hardwood flooring. These are major factors that affect the sound levels in the classrooms. Over the past couple weeks, our group has been focusing on four rooms of the 7th grade, two with accommodations and two with no accommodations. We reached out to Erica Walker, a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University School of Public Health in the Department of Environmental Science who lent us a professional sound meter to use. You can also use the Noise Score app to record sound levels in your environment.
Rooms 240, 238, 239, and 228 allowed us to conduct our test in their rooms. Data sets were collected in five minute intervals with the sound meter set up at the center of the room. As we measured, we took notes on the date, the start and end times of our recording, the subject of the class, the activity during the recording, the number of students and teachers in the class, where we placed our sound meter, and whether doors or windows were open or closed. According to the World Health Organization and the American National Standard Institute, the suitable background noise levels in classrooms should be around 35 decibels and 45 decibels (dB) outside of the school building for the duration of the class period. According to the World Health Organization, “Environmental noise exposure is responsible for a range of cognitive impairment among children, annoyance, stress-related mental health risks, and tinnitus” . Based on our data, our results show that the sound decibels in classrooms are much higher than 35dB. As shown in our results, when class was being taught the noise levels in rooms with accommodations had lower averages of decibels when compared to the classrooms without accommodations. With the goal of reducing noise level in classrooms, the classrooms has accommodations such as lower ceilings and carpet. The classrooms that do not have accommodations have noise levels higher than rooms with accommodations. The rooms with accommodations were much closer to the recommended noise levels, neither room having a noise level 20 decibel higher than the recommendation of the World Health Organization. Yet the rooms without accommodations had noise levels closer to twice the recommended noise level by the World Health Organization. In our data we do not differentiate ambient noise and classroom discussion. Students can reach out to us about about the Noise Score App and conduct your own experiment in one of your own classrooms.