 So, welcome to Skywatch. I'm Jimmy Lease, and I'm your host for today's episode. I'm the founder and the reporter for the independent online news report, cancelf35.substack.com. Our co-host, Donika Katowicz, the national co-director of Code Pink, Women for Peace, we'll be back for next month's episode. I'd like to warmly welcome our guest today, Richard Joseph and Dr. Peter Bingham. Dr. Bingham is the chief of the pediatric neurology division at the UVM Medical Center. He is also a professor at the Lerner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. Dr. Bingham is a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. His clinical work spans the range of pediatric neurological conditions. He's the author or co-author of more than 65 medical research papers. His ongoing research is in the area of neuro-rehabilitation. And Richard Joseph is an artist living and working in the flight path of the F-35 in Winooski, Vermont. He's long been involved in the campaign against the F-35, and he's particularly been interested in the effect of military jet noise on the hearing, learning, and cognitive development of children. Richard graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in philosophy and from the Art Institute of Chicago with a master of fine arts. These paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums in the US, Europe, and Latin America and are represented in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. I'd like to just show one picture before we get started. This is from a training for healthcare providers that was put out by the World Health Organization called Children and Noise. And I'm just going to show a picture of the human ear first, where you can see the inner workings of the ear, especially notice the cochlea and the auditory nerve. Now in the next picture we're going to look inside the cochlea. This is the area where sound is sensed in our ears. And we're going to look at a picture of the dent. The cochlea is lined with hair cells, and those hair cells vibrate with noise, and that vibration is transmitted to the brain by that nerve. So this picture is a scanning electron micrograph showing a normal hair cell in the cochlea and a noise-damaged hair cell. And you can immediately see the physical effect of too much high-intensity noise. It could be a long exposure to high intensity. It could be an immediate prompt if the noise level is high enough. Or it could be from repeated exposure to noise at a lower level. The Air Force, in its environmental statement, said that repeated exposure to noise at the level of the F-35 can cause hearing damage. And this is the kind of damage that they were talking about. So now I'd like to turn it over to Richard, who has important questions for Peter Bingham. Please take it away, Richard. Okay. So, Dr. Bingham, you said that noise from the F-35 is neurotoxic, you said that previously. Could you just define for us what the meaning of the term, neurotoxic? Thank you. A neurotoxin is defined by the National Institutes of Health as any exposure that alters normal nervous system function. That could, in principle, include either the peripheral nervous system, as was just mentioned, the cochlea or the central nervous system. And I realize that it may sound unusual to talk about an experience as neurotoxic. We know that experience grows the brain. It's not just nutrition and good breathing. And so there's lots of examples of impaired neurodevelopment and effects, anatomic effects on the brain from what I could call toxic experiences, deprivation, for example, animal models of this and clinical studies. So there's more to say about how it could be, how it acts as a neurotoxin. Right. So that leads me to my next question, which is, could you explain the mechanism of action? How does noise impact the nervous system? And this is an unfolding story. We've known for decades that children who are sitting near noise have poorer test results, poorer reading, and poorer self-control, and that when we change that, it improves. So I think that brings up the point about reversibility. That's not answering your question about mechanism, but we're still learning how irreversible are these effects of loud noises, even single brief, extremely loud noises. But it has to do with the ears more or less as an antenna for the brain. We don't close our ears like we can close our eyes. So it's basically propagating waves into the networks of the brain, that is, sound in general. And it is the most exquisite processor that we have in the brain. When we are understanding each other in speech and as children hear their parents speak, they're making processor distinctions at the one-hundredth of a second. So it's the most rapid, fast processor, if you will, as a computer in the brain, very fragile, therefore. So from animal models and epidemiological studies, exactly how this happens is still an unfolding story. But in effect, the construction of the networks, on which we depend, for which we wish the best kind of processing networks for our children, are, in effect, not growing right. This is an electrical process, I'm talking about it as a software of the brain kind of metaphor. And the brain was evolved over millions of years as a kind of an agreement, what should my environment be? And so that I can use this gift of my brain as well as it can be used. And when we expose it to aberrant, never-before-seen-on-the-planet or herd experiences and sounds like over 80, 90 decibels, you're really messing up those networks. And we know that children don't hear as well, even if their audiometry isn't abnormal, that it's changed their ability to understand language. I hear from parents, my child has maybe selective hearing. How many of those children actually have a perceptual problem of understanding language because of noise exposure? Hard to measure that, but I suspect that that is the case for many children. So there's a network component in this. The network is impacted by it. Is there damage at the cellular level? That's most easily seen at the level of the cochlea, which is part of the peripheral nervous system. And the pictures we've just seen and talked about are about that. So far, it's not as though somebody, say, on autopsy, you could show the effect on networks. We know from animal models that there's beta amyloid, we associate this with Alzheimer's disease, is built up in the hippocampus in animals, in mice, exposed to noise. Now, exactly how much noise would it take to make that? But we've been using animals' rodents as predictors of human health for decades. That's how we test medicines. That would suggest a real possibility that children exposed throughout their youth to loud noise would be more predisposed to Alzheimer's in old age. There's good evidence epidemiologically from almost a dose response. How close are you to the airport? What is your likelihood of developing dementia? Epidemiological studies on millions of people, in some cases from Europe, dementia without always the pathology that we've been talking about sorted out. But yes, memory problems are seen in children exposed to noise, and later in life, dementia is closely linked to noise exposure. So that leads into the next question, part of what you just said. The long and short-term impacts of this on these children, because we have children from infancy to adulthood growing up exposed to this kind of noise in Winooski and South Burlington. What would you expect the lives of these children, how would they be impacted by this? Everything we know and have known for decades says that their reading will be impacted, their learning, their performance on standardized tests will be impacted by this daily repeated exposure to, and depending on where they're sitting, well over 90 decibels of sound. Hard to measure, and I compare this to lead poisoning. 50 years ago, the paint companies were saying, no, no, don't worry about lead, it's fine, it's just good colors. And we have a similar situation now with people describing noise as a nuisance, temporary. You'll get over it. That's not what I know, and that's not what the medical literature says. And I imagine that people listening to us talk now are living with some degree of cognitive impairment, not such that they're demented, but affecting reading, which has to do with the auditory brain, and affecting memory, and even mental conditions such as depression have been linked to this. So that's a sketch, which is without numbers. The impact, you can imagine, we meet somebody who had a lead level of 20, and they're doing fine now, you know, historically, but we know that their brain has, in effect, taken a hit from that. And this is about taking care of vulnerable, developing children. They're nervous systems. Yeah, so the children are much more vulnerable to all of us than adults. Absolutely, yeah. There's this idea of critical periods. Like once you go through this learning stage of what's called neuroplasticity, we want to set that up right. And that's all about experience. That's why children go to school. And that's what learning is all about. And there is plenty of evidence at different levels, from animal models to epidemiology, electrophysiology, and human beings, that the brain is adversely affected by noise exposure. Okay, one of the arguments that was made during this whole process of the debate over the F-35 basin was that the noise is only, at first it was, it's only six minutes a day. So you alluded to this idea that it's perceived as merely an annoyance. Now people are saying, well, but the intense noise is only 30 seconds a day. So it couldn't possibly do any harm. So could you come in a little bit more about that? We are wired to receive noise as a threat. And most of us have had this experience, a sudden noise does that startle response, that fight or flight, the pulse goes up, the blood pressure goes up. And even if you know, oh no, that's okay, that wasn't actually dangerous. And even if it's not sudden, it's still any loud noise will elicit that stress response. That's just the way we are wired. And that does not go away so quickly. What's more, when repeated, that becomes a new framing of our network. So I think that even like the brief, the brevity of it is less important than the repetition and the intensity of it, as I think of its effect. And the stress response has its own time scale, not to mention a transient change in our capacity to hear that goes on for hours after a loud exposure. So let me ask something. Go ahead. So the Air Force itself says that repeated exposure to noise at 114 decibels can cause hearing damage. But hearing damage isn't the only thing that can go wrong. So the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health says that has a chart, which we can take a look at, that shows the duration for different noise levels. That's what this chart has, and has the noise level in decibels. And then it shows how long a worker can be exposed to that noise without hearing protection and be safe according to NIOSH. And if you look down in the chart, you can see that it's about 15 minutes at 100 decibels during the entire 24-hour day. So they're at work for eight hours. They shouldn't be exposed to 100 decibels for more than 15 minutes during that time period. But when you get to 115 decibels, like the F-35, it's only, I think it was 28 seconds. So 28 seconds is your time to be a worker. Now, what about for a child? Wouldn't that, would children be more sensitive than an adult working on the job using a chainsaw, let's say, or maybe they can get over it? I mean, I think there's a good reason why, as families and communities, we've learned to really watch out for our children in all kinds of ways. They are at risk in their developing judgment and just this neuroplasticity, neurodevelopment. So your point is well taken that any threshold, so arbitrarily set as an improvisation on what the rules should be as we find out the impact, is going to be actually even more, you know, less sensitive to what's going on for a child. So we have to be more careful for the children. So here we have, in Winooski in South Burlington, in Burlington, in Williston, we have lots of children being born every month, and they've just gone through nine months in utero, and now they're born and they're being exposed to this 115 decibel noise dozen times a day, hundreds of times a month, thousands of times a year. I mean, is there any argument anybody can take the opposite point of view that this is okay or good for them? Yeah, I think it's a good question of why have we neglected this? If we have known this all this time, there is an amount of glorification of noise in our society. I think that noise, loud noise, I have neighbors who seem to practice this, are a sign of power and capacity. And also, it's a nuisance, okay, but this is what we need to do, or there are jobs or the economy, but anyhow, that's not I think the fundamental attitude that we have about caring for our children. I'm offering some speculations about how did we get to this point of obliviousness when we've had the scientific evidence for all this time of not only that in workplaces, accidents, increased accidents because of your attention is fragmented, increased depression, even suicide has been linked to noise exposure. So there's a lot to think about and put in the balance that we've been in some way collectively, deliberately it would seem ignoring. I agree with your question in that way. It seems that a lot of this ignoring comes from the political leadership, the congressional delegation because many of these issues were raised during the long period of discussion about the coming F-35 and it was completely ignored by the congressional delegation and I think that people assume that if they don't, if those people are not concerned about it, then we don't need to be concerned about it. Agreed, our leaders, they're there to listen and I've reminded of, what is that skit? I can't hear you, I've got a banana in my ear and like, no, let's take the banana out and let's have a conversation about what the stakes really are and I have written letters to them and I intend to continue with that communication. One thing we learned during the period before the F-35 arrived was that the congressional, in particular the congressional delegation, the governor and the mayor of Burlington seemed to be working together to not meet with people who were concerned about this issue. They didn't want to talk about it, they didn't want to hear, it was kind of ironic that it was a hearing issue and they didn't want to talk and listen and I had participated on other issues going back to the Iraq war to talk to our congressional delegation but they just didn't want to hear about this one and that made me feel like we must be on to something here because if they don't even have an answer, a reasoned answer, that's why they wouldn't want to talk about it and hearing what you're saying today, it really raises the question, why would we be doing this in a city location where we have, where there are over 1,000 children in this very small intense noise zone of the F-35 that was delineated by the Air Force itself in the environmental impact statement. They said that 20% of the population are children and 6,600 people live in that oval-shaped area around the runway. We have the tightest, we have an intense population right around the runway, why would you pick of the 18 runways in Vermont, why would you pick the one with the highest population, the most children for a military jet that could be positioned in any of the other locations even if you wanted to keep it in Vermont. Certainly across the lake we have actually an old Air Force base, they could be it but that's in New York for some reason, they couldn't be located, I don't know why but there isn't really a dense population around that one or around many of the other 18 airports in Vermont. One out of 12 kids has some degree of sensory neural hearing loss, of injury to the cochlea, there could be different reasons for that besides noise but we know noise is an important contributor to that and I realize that change is hard, I'm not a policy maker and I haven't done that job but I am hopeful that there can be a real conversation of what's at stake in our communities for our children. One other question that Danica wanted to raise with you was that Code Pink, just as background, she's a co-director at Code Pink, Women for Peace and they've been very much involved especially in the last year in calling for grounding the F-35 nationally and internationally and they're organizing with people in different countries in different cities. In Madison, Wisconsin the F-35, the first F-35 jet arrived for basing there last week so we are looking at an expansion of this situation, it's not just going to be in Burlington, it's going to other cities around the country and around the world and her question was when they organize a day of lobbying in Congress and they have these periodically, they're planning on having one focusing on the F-35, what would be something they could say to a congressman or a senator about why this shouldn't be based especially in a city like here in Vermont, the most densely populated cities in the state is where it's being based but also well let's start with that. I mean I think we've been talking about all of the issues, we wouldn't say it's okay for a child to have a lead level of 10 or 20 and not fix the water supply and we are in a very analogous situation, I don't know how exactly to compare that level to sound exposure but it's a very similar overlooked poison in effect to the nervous system so I just think it's everything we've been talking about school performance and if you question the evidence I'll be happy to contribute to the discussion about you know we know epidemiological evidence isn't absolutely about cause and effect but they did the study children near the airport and then the airport was closed and then their reading improved so that's pretty compelling as a natural experiment for example that we know that changing the sound level there's a corresponding change in test scores behavior and reading. So some of this damage or impact is potentially reversible but some of it is not would you agree with that? Right and not knowing is like go swim in the pond I'm not or go skate I'm not sure how thick the ice is I think when we don't know we err on the side of caution when we're talking about our future our children. Right well with hearing we do know that the Air Force admits they say so right in the environmental impact statement that at first this hearing damage goes away and you and your hearing comes back but after a long after enough exposures it becomes permanent so it's not that you become deaf but that you have degraded hearing there's your hearing sensitivity is reduced and and then if you're in a noisy environment at a party or in a social situation you may not be able to understand as clearly what other people are saying and it becomes more difficult for you to participate in those kinds of social situations and this degrades the quality of your life especially as you get older and so these are things that it's not just the children but it's if there's permanent damage to a child that's going to affect everything about the rest of their life and here we have an experiment going on not with mice but with 1,300 children who live in the noise zone delineated by the Air Force itself what it just seems mind-boggling that we have a we have two senators we have a congressman we have our governor we have our mayor of Burlington who and Burlington owns the airport they could put a stop to it like that by just telling i mean the air guard no you can't use our airport i get it we human beings are like this we have an intention and then we discount anything that seems to mitigate or interfere with that intention that's human nature but a conversation is not a dangerous thing to do and i welcome that opportunity well i think we should take advantage of that and set up meetings with senator sanders senator welch congressman ballot but also what's very interesting is in the last year or so we found out that really local governments have the power to that it's not just the state and federal officials but our local governments were delegated the power to protect the public health and safety and to regulate the operation of vehicles of every kind and when the legislature passed that they had in mind vehicles of every kind even those operated by the state national guard so i think that this is something we want to bring to the city council in wanouski in burlington in south burlington in williston and in the other towns around the airport like essex and richmond that are being affected yeah well i think we're running out of time i really appreciate both of you coming this has been a fantastic discussion and i hope we can we can proceed further with this as time goes on uh sky watch it's going to be broadcast on town meeting tv it's also going to be available on youtube and town meeting tv's own website thank you very much i'll just add that i realize that part of it is how what can you do you're there under this sound and all of what i'm saying i would not want to frighten anyone but i realize it's it's a concern to be aware there are some ways to attenuate the sound protect hearing children don't have that awareness of the long-term threat to their well-being and there are ways from heavy curtains to dampen sound to just being aware and protecting your ears as a start it's not the final solution right it should be the last resort but that's where we're at today one thing i would add to that is to avoid because to some degree you can predict the schedule of the place not not a hundred percent by any means but you have a rough idea of when they're going to be flying and to avoid having children outside during those periods because it's really it's outside that the noise is most intense agreed yeah parents really should be aware of that and speaking out so that the children are aware for their children someday to be aware this is part of your wellness right and it's also as you mentioned speaking out this is the this is the time for people to it's always the time to speak to your representatives especially your local representatives and um and you and to encourage them to pass ordinances to pass regulations to enforce those ordinances and regulations to have public hearings to question uh the military that the military's own regulations prohibit being located in populated areas with dangerous military equipment and it's completely being violated nobody from the news media has yet been able as yet asked them that question and when they were asked at a Winooski hearing in 2021 they declined to answer they said we'd get back to you but they never did although they did get back on other questions so I think we've got we've got a good case here and we can win on this on this issue if we're persistent and I'd like to thank our audience thank you and our participants thank you very much