Weekend Reads | Pickleball Noise Pollution and the Science Behind It
This weekend's read is a deep dive into pickleball — specifically pickleball noise. Recently, pickleball has become a celebrated export from the Pacific Northwest (Bainbridge Island, to be precise) and has taken the country by storm because it's easier than tennis to learn and play. That has led to many requests for local parks departments to re-stripe tennis courts for pickleball. But pickleball is indeed not tennis: The court is much smaller, and it's played with different balls and paddles that have harder surfaces that make louder and higher-pitched noises compared with tennis. As the sport has spread, so have noise complaints from people who live near newly created pickleball courts.
The City of Centennial, Colorado, under pressure both to provide pickleball courts and to protect residents from pickleball noise, hired a consultant to do a full analysis of the acoustics of pickleball and provide recommendations to the city on siting, permitting, and noise abatement. The resulting report is a fascinating read.
The report begins with a great lesson on sound and acoustics (the physics of sound). What we perceive as sound is a disturbance in air pressure, often vibration or a pulse. These air disturbances are measured by their amplitude (which we hear as loudness), frequency of vibration (pitch), and change over time (duration and rise or fall).
We refer to any unwanted sound as "noise," and the extent to which it bothers us as "annoyance." Annoyance isn't just a matter of preference; researchers have known for a long time that particular sounds can affect us physiologically. One obvious effect is that exposure to very loud sounds can cause hearing impairment. But noise can also be a psychosocial stressor, such as fingernails on a chalkboard, sirens, a baby's cry, or car horns. We are generally okay with low-level and low-pitch background noises and can "tune it out," but louder noises and higher-pitched noises grab our attention and in fact can place us in a higher state of attention and anxiety because they are often associated with something being wrong. Medical research shows that prolonged exposure to attention-grabbing noises can create chronic stress and lead to all sorts of health problems, starting with inability to sleep or concentrate and even high blood pressure.
The typical sound made by a pickleball being hit by a paddle creates a sharp noise in the range of about 1,000 cycles per second, or 1 kilohertz — the midrange of our hearing and the part we are most attuned to. That is a higher pitch than tennis, and in the range that tends to draw our attention, so many people find it an annoyance. But to fully understand pickleball noise, we also need to understand how far the noise travels. The answer to that is a combination of several factors. First, the pitch of the noise itself: it turns out we perceive higher-pitched noises as being louder than lower-pitched ones. So a pickleball hit seems louder to us than a tennis hit, even if they are really the same loudness. We can see that in the graph below: We perceive a 60-decibel noise at a pitch of 1 kilohertz to be just as loud as an 80-decibel noise at a pitch of 100 hertz.
But the heart of the matter is understanding how far the noise travels, or, more specifically, how far away from a pickleball court the noise is loud enough to be an annoyance. The Environmental Protection Agency says anything above 55 decibels can be an "annoyance" that would interfere with daily activities. So the consultants did measurements at actual pickleball courts to see where the 55-decibel distance threshold was.
It turns out the distance isn't a clean circle all the way around. The sound of a ball hitting a paddle is strongest directly in front and back of the paddle, i.e., the direction of the hit, because that's where the air is being pushed the hardest. In front of the paddle, the sound is made by the paddle indenting where the ball hits, and then bouncing back (and then vibrating like a spring until it quickly dissipates). In the back of the paddle, the same thing happens but in the opposite way: The paddle pops out a bit, pops back in, and then vibrates. Our ears process those two sounds identically (the same loudness, pitch, and duration) even though their air pressure is opposite each other, so if we stand directly in front of or behind a paddle, we hear the same noise. But if we stand to the side of the paddle, those two sounds both bend around and meet — and cancel each other out. Because of this, pickleball is noisiest along the length of the court and beyond in both directions, and it's quietest to the sides.
The consultants found that the 55-decibel threshold for pickleball noise is about 500 feet away from the court along its length (i.e., the direction of play) and about half of that, 260 feet, to the sides. That means the orientation of pickleball courts is incredibly important to how much of a noise annoyance they make. Of course, the players prefer outdoor courts to be oriented north—south to minimize sun glare, but if there are homes just to the north or south, that could be a big problem.
There are things you can do to reduce the noise, though. The surrounding terrain makes a big difference: flat, rigid surfaces, like asphalt and concrete, reflect sound and allow it to travel further, while rougher ground and vegetation absorb and baffle sound. Sound also travels best by line of sight, so using plants, berms, and walls to block noise can help a lot — but with certain caveats. Setting up two parallel walls made of a material that reflects sound can not only magnify it, but also force it to go up and over the walls. That can make the noise even worse for people above ground level, such as in a second-story apartment nearby.
The consultants make several policy recommendations, both for zoning and for usage regulations. They suggested that pickleball courts should not be allowed within 100 feet of residential buildings; within 350 feet, noise abatement measures must be installed, and within 600 feet, an acoustic review should be done to understand the full impact the court will have. They also suggested that usage of a court within a certain distance of residences should be restricted to daytime hours. And finally, they suggested that the city should look at mandating the newer generation of pickleball equipment that is designed to be quieter, known as the "green list."
As an aside, they also looked at the noise created by pickleball players themselves and by spectators (especially where tournaments are held). In their investigations, they found that most of the noise complaints filed about pickleball players was about the content of their speech, not the loudness of it; apparently, there is a fair amount of cursing on pickleball courts.
Seattle Parks and Recreation has its own webpage on pickleball, which notes where courts are located around the city and how to reserve one. It also notes that they are investigating a new generation of quieter courts.
Kevin Schofield is a freelance writer and publishes Seattle Paper Trail. Previously he worked for Microsoft, published Seattle City Council Insight, co-hosted the "Seattle News, Views and Brews" podcast, and raised two daughters as a single dad. He serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Park Zoo, where he also volunteers.
Featured image via Ivan Marc/Shutterstock.com.
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