As a research assistant in the Brown Community Noise Lab, Nina Lee has spent years monitoring noise levels across New England, advocating for environmental justice every step of the way.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Multiple times a week, Nina Lee finds herself in a Rhode Islander's backyard. She unpacks and then assembles an environmental noise monitor and begins recording. A week later, she'll return to the site, collect the monitor and store the data for future statistical analysis.
"I love getting to meet all these people," she said. "They'll often want to come out and chat with me about concerns in their neighborhood and gain an understanding of how sound is spread throughout Rhode Island."
Since October 2021, Lee has set up roughly 130 of these monitors across Rhode Island, as far as the northernmost corners to the Narragansett Bay islands, siting at least two monitors in every city or town. Her goal is to use the data to create a sound exposure map of the entire state that will inform a new epidemiological model for children's health.
Lee, who currently works as a research assistant in the Brown University School of Public Health, will begin her Ph.D. in epidemiology this fall, working closely with Assistant Professor of Epidemiology Erica Walker in the Brown Community Noise Lab to analyze the monitors' findings. Using statewide data on children's health outcomes from the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute and other sources, Lee will help investigate a potential link between children's health and noise pollution - one of the most understudied forms of pollution.
