An update on my Guardians of the Sea project in Environmental Science which just came to an end! To recap, my group and I decided to tackle two lesser-known pollutions: light and noise pollution which I discussed in one of my recent blog posts (https://hibahshafi.weebly.com/blog/guardians-of-the-sea).
After deciding we were going to focus on light and noise pollution and completing research, we developed our needs statement: “Napa’s riverfront businesses need to minimize the harmful impact they hold over the Napa River due to noise and light pollution because of it’s detrimental impact on marine life as well as humans.” After developing our needs statement we got to work and began researching the local impact of sound and light pollution but were unable to find anything on google so we ended up reaching out to several different local organizations all over Napa. Several of the organizations got back to us and provided us with some ideas, the most helpful being looking into Environmental Impact Reports of Businesses, but that was about it. The reason behind this was that there has not been any research into the effects humans and businesses in Napa have on the amount of sound and light pollution that there is in Napa. Knowing this information, we set out to do our own research. We walked around all over downtown Napa and recorded decibel levels close to the riverfront and found that the average reading we were getting was around 70 dB which is very high and at some places, we found that the reading was over 75 dB which can impair the hearing of marine life. We also walked around to different businesses and conducted a survey asking a few basic questions about the number of lights they used, where they were located, whether or not their lights were energy efficient, and asked them about the number of events they held with large volume levels per year. After weighing the different ideas we had: going dark in downtown after 10 for a week, speaking to city council about updating the questions on Environmental Impact Reports, and finding a solution, we decided to focus on awareness. Each person can contribute greatly to the amount of noise and light pollution generated and we wanted to educate people about what the problem was and how they could help. We decided Earth Day was the perfect platform for us to raise awareness about this lesser-known issue and got a booth where we had an interactive bingo, posters were people could write in how they could lessen the amount of noise and light pollution they generated, and an informative trifold. It was a huge success and a super fun project!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHibah Shafi is a Senior at New Technology High School. Archives
May 2019
Categories |