Noise Control Act

Noise Control Act

The Noise Pollution and Abatement Act of 1972 is a statute of the United States initiating a federal program of regulating noise pollution with the intent of protecting human health and minimizing annoyance of noise to the general public.

The Act established mechanisms of setting emission standards for virtually every source of noise, including motor vehicles, aircraft, certain types of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment and major appliances. It also put local governments on notice as to their responsibilities in land use planning to address noise mitigation. This noise regulation framework comprised a broad data base detailing the extent of noise health effects.

Congress ended funding of the federal noise control program in 1981, which curtailed development of further national regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) retains authority to conduct research and publish information on noise and its effects on the public. The initial EPA regulations and programs provided a basis for development of many state and local government noise control laws across the United States. See Noise regulation.

Read more about Noise Control Act:  See Also

Famous quotes containing the words noise, control and/or act:

    For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.
    Jacques Attali (b. 1943)

    We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    Buttons: Clowns are funny people, Holly. They only love once.
    Holly: All men aren’t like that, even if they act like clowns.
    Fredric M. Frank (1911–1977)