Do you hear the North Buffalo “hum”?
Community Survey on Noise Pollution from Materion
Background
The noise survey was published online using Google Forms on March 19th, 2021 and shared through community channels such as neighborhood groups on Facebook, NextDoor, Redditt, and through personal channels.The majority of responses came back by June 8th, 2021.
Results
● 149 out of 197 respondents said that they hear the noise (143) or someone close to them hears it (6)
● Out of those 149 respondents…
○ Age of problem
■ 10 (6 7%) said less than a month
■ 42 (28.2%) said less than a year
■ 55 (36 9%) said more than a year
■ 41 (27.5%) said multiple years
○ Negative impacts
■ 82 (55%) said it really annoys them
■ 76 (51%) said they have trouble sleeping due to the noise
■ 63 (42%) say they cannot have peace and quiet in their homes
■ 24 (16%) said it raises their stress levels
■ 21 (14%) say it makes it difficult to focus when working from home
■ 18 (12%) say it causes them to have frequency headaches
● Respondents also had the ability to share additional comments with us, and the following are the most telling quotes:
○ The noise pollution significantly degrades the physical and mental health of residents.
■ “I am awaken(ed) by it. I start getting nervous and anxious thinking I’m nuts. It affects my sleep. I haven’t slept more than 3-4 hours at a time. The nights I wake from the Hum I have a migraine the next day. I feel like I wake up when I hear it that I’m in a bad mood but I know it’s the noise. My deepest sleep is at 5-6:30 am when the humming stops. Or is it my total exhaustion? I have tried to sleep with the music low but I hear it when the 2 hour timer has shut off.”
■ “It concerns me and I wonder how it affects our overall health.”
■ “It really affects my headaches.”
■ “I am up with an infant several times a night. The noise is so loud and constant I cannot fall back asleep with it. I’ve tried a white noise machine but that doesn’t even drown it out. It actually hurts my ears. There’s no way this is healthy”
■ “It's like a low vibration hum that you can almost feel too. Gives me anxiety & I had insomnia for years because of it.”
■ “This sound keeps me up at night and was especially hard last year when Covid stress was high and it was hard to sleep to begin with. The hum causes me headaches and anxiety especially at night when there are no distractions from the sound. During the summer, I can’t have my bedroom windows open because I won’t be able to sleep because of that constant, droning hum.”
○ The noise pollution makes sleeping difficult for residents, further degrading their health.
■ “Keeps me awake 3-5 am”
■ “I just moved here in November and I had to buy a sound machine to drown it out at night so I could sleep.”
■ “It is very obvious on quiet nights, and gets louder every year. I would guess the equipment making the noise, which I have trace to the plant at Main and Hertel is getting louder with age. I have heard it for years, but no where near as loud as it is today.”
■ “Often hear early morning hours and keeps me awake. Causing headaches and many sleepless nights.”
■ “It's a hum that I could hear, even when my head was on my pillow at night. Even with one ear bud in to listen to the movie I would watch on my kindle, I would still hear & feel the vibration of it.”
■ “It's loud enough to keep me awake when I'm trying to sleep. It's extremely annoying.”
■ “I’m a very light sleeper and it constantly woke me up at all hours of the night.”
■ “In the summer when I wake up in the middle of the night and hear it, it's very loud and hard to get back to sleep. Sometimes it's really loud and other times quieter, but I can hear it most of the summer”
○ The noise pollution hurts residents’abilities to do their jobs and focus when working from home. It also impacts employees of nearby businesses trying to do their jobs.
■ “I work at Bennett high school, and when the windows are open it is distracting an(d) annoying”
■ “Just drives me bananas. I work from home and often times it makes it difficult to concentrate.”
■ “The sound makes it really difficult to focus on detailed work-related tasks that require focus and attention.”
○ Residents can’t enjoy their homes because of the ever-present noise pollution penetrating surrounding neighborhoods.
■ “When trying to relax on my porch, it’s all I hear”
■ “It is noticeable outside and affects the peace and quiet. It makes it impossible to enjoy outside time.”
■ “I have a lovely front porch and don't like to sit outside because of it.”
○ Materion is actively driving people out of their homes and out of Buffalo because of their negligence and noise pollution
■ “I’ve had brief thoughts of having to leave the neighborhood.”
■ “We finally moved out of area”
■ “Low frequency hum that feels like its vibrating through my teeth and eyeballs! It causes me to experience wicked headaches and irritability. I don’t hear it constantly every day, but its frequent enough to make me consider leaving the neighborhood that i love so much.”
■ “I actually recently moved from the city in part from the noise.”
○ Residents of Northeast Buffalo are annoyed and fed up with the noise pollution that has been plaguing their lives for years.
■ “[It is a] continuous mechanical hum sometimes sound(s) like a hovering helicopter in the distance. Obnoxious at midnight and later!”
■ “Yes, a hum...like a"whuuuh"...and it beats too, meaning there's a slow pulsing of loud-soft. And I think I've been hearing it much more faintly for years, but it seems it got much worse this past Winter. It's most noticeable in the evening when I go to bed...and all my windows are closed.”
■ “It really never stops. Even in the middle of the night. It's just endless and aggravating.”
■ “A constant hum like a construction crew is in the distance grounding something up, or an airplane going by constantly for days on end.”
■ “We can hear a constant hum when we are upstairs in our house, we could not figure out where it was coming from. It sounds like an appliance is running, like a dryer or furnace or something, but it's not coming from anything inside the house.”
■ “Subtle, yes, but slightly maddening! Make it stop!”