Residents living along an isolated Louisiana five-mile road can’t remember the last time they got a good night’s sleep.
Hano Road, about an hour northwest of New Orleans, endures deafening noises from 1am to 5pm every day due to garbage trucks and gravel haulers barreling down the road to drop loads off at the local gravel pit and landfill.
While the small population of around 100 people has long experienced many restless nights, they have also seen a rise in dementia.
Experts believe this could be because excessive loud noises trigger the body’s fight-or-flight response, releasing excess hormones that lead to inflammation and brain cell death.
Along a five-mile road in Louisiana, residents fear that excessive noise may have detrimental effects on their health
Melvin Jennings, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran, said that he can’t remember the last time he and his wife Patricia slept through the night.
One night in 2019, the Jennings’ bedroom windows rattled as a procession of trucks raced by one after the other just yards from their home.
And the effects can be damaging. Mrs Jennings suffers from dementia, and research shows that constantly being startled awake at night by loud noises – dubbed ‘noise pollution – can worsen dementia and raise the risk of heart disease.
Mr Jennings told the Louisiana Illuminator: ‘It’s like torture. Especially when you’re in your own house. All through the night … It scares you.’
Now, 96 residents have signed a petition to get the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) to push for noise regulations.
Louis Nick Joseph, who represents the district that includes Hano Road on the Tangipahoa Parish Council, said: ‘The problem is that with the parish, us being rural, we don’t have a noise ordinance.
And if we had one, how do you regulate it, you know? How would you regulate the noise, is my question.
Jamie Banks, an environmental scientist and founder of the nonprofit Quiet Communities, said that the noise is ‘far beyond an annoyance.’
Quiet Communities is suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a lack of enforcement of the Noise Control Act, which was enacted in 1972 and is meant to set noise standards.
Dave Williams, a retiree living on Hano Road, said that he called Ms Banks in 2021 complaining of ‘being serenaded by the gravel trucks’ at 3am.
‘You know, people out here are being abused,’ he had said. ‘There’s people down there suffering, right now…we ain’t got nobody to help us.’
The noise had triggered anxiety and vomiting in Mr Williams, and his wife, Liz, suffered flare-ups of her fibromyalgia, despite earplugs and sleep medication.
Noise pollution is sound over 65 decibels, which is about as loud as a normal conversation. However, just one truck driving along the road could measure up to 100 decibels.
The Tangipahoa Parish Council tried to develop another route for trucks to and from the gravel pit and landfill, Joseph said.
But the new path would mean acquiring private property and the owner had asked for more money than the council was authorized to spend, according to the councilman.
Research has long shown that noise pollution has detrimental effects on health.
Noise pollution has been shown to cause blood vessel damage and inflammation, leading to increased risk of dementia and heart disease (stock image)
A study published last year by the UK Health Security Agency, for example, found that in 2018, around 100,000 years of good health were lost due to road traffic.
Additionally, 13,000 were lost from railway noise and 17,000 from aircraft sounds.
This was due to the noise increasing the risk of strokes, heart disease, diabetes, depression, and anxiety.
It’s thought that loud noise triggers the release of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which control the body’s stress response.
If triggered for long periods of time, these hormones can damage the lining of blood vessels, leading to issues like high blood pressure and heart disease.
The above graphic shows the ten cities with the most noise pollution at night
A 2020 report from the European Environmental Agency, for example, found that 12,000 premature deaths and 48,000 cases of heart disease per year could be attributed to noise pollution in Europe.
Long-term exposure to loud noises has also been shown to impact cognitive function.
A review in Frontiers in Public Health found that when participants were consistently exposed to noise about 57 decibels, they were 47 percent more likely to develop dementia than those who had lower levels of noise exposure.
The increased stress response from loud noises can lead to inflammation in the brain and cell death associated with dementia.
The noise can also cause mental health effects. Mr Jennings said that ‘it’s bad on my PTSD’ causing him to jump in fear at night before calming down his wife.
He said: ‘I don’t have nobody helping through the night. It’s on me.
‘I just have to do it without the rest. And then I can’t hardly sleep in the daytime. That’s what’s got me messed up.’
Now, the family and many others along the road wait for help they fear won’t come.
Mr Jennings said: ‘We want to live in peace again, and we’re getting older. We need more peace than we’re getting.’
