Sonic Doom

Can jet noise kill?

Scientists have long suspected that living or working within earshot of a major airport can be dangerous to health. Studies have linked high noise levels to hearing loss, nervous breakdowns, ulcers, hypertension and birth defects. Now a professor of the University of California at Los Angeles brings worse news: jet noise may kill.

Aero-acoustics Expert William Meecham of the U.C.L.A. School of Engineering and Applied Science reports that people who reside within a 3-mile radius of Los Angeles International Airport have a 19% higher death rate than people who live six miles away. Most of the difference was in stress-related disease. Meecham's target group of about 80,000 people in the Inglewood and Lennox sections near the airport was compared with a control group similar in number, age, income and racial balance. The target group had 40% more fatal strokes and 140% more deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. "These diseases may not be caused by the noise," says Meecham, "but it appears they are hurried along by the tension."

A regional official of the Federal Aviation Administration suggested that other, as yet undetermined, factors besides noise may account for the higher death rate. That may be, Meecham acknowledges, but he notes that 220 extra deaths were recorded in the high-noise areas last year. The odds against that kind of difference occurring by chance, he argues, are a thousand to one.

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