New York City generates the most noise complaints of any U.S. city. It also sits at the epicenter of a growing global body of research that is no longer treating that noise as a mere annoyance — but as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, and death.
An estimated 90% of New York City residents are exposed to noise levels exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines for levels considered harmful to human health. That estimate, documented in research on New York City's noise sensor network published in peer-reviewed journals, places nearly all of NYC's 8.3 million residents in a zone of chronic harmful noise exposure — not as an occasional event, but as a baseline daily condition.
