Upon reading the recent story entitled “Council’s baptism: Thorny issues surface again,” I noticed a few inaccuracies shared by our city leadership concerning the issue with the noise pollution emanating from the shooting range on Phenix Avenue.

First, the claim that enclosing the range would not eliminate the sound is quite inconsistent with an article from 2022 featuring Meshanticut’s then-Ward 5 City Councilman, Chris Paplauskus, on RINewstoday.com, “He [Paplauskus] went to the enclosed Coventry shooting range and sat in the parking lot and could not hear anything – he believes enclosing [Cranston’s] is the answer.”

The next claim is that no complaints from the school administration have ever been received by Hopkins’ administration. As a parent, I find this alarming if they have not spoken out, and you should too, if true. It makes me question the professionalism of our leaders in our public school system. Are they up to date on the latest research, and if so why aren’t they standing up and protecting our children from this? The research is definitive: noise is the second largest environmental cause of health problems after air pollution, according to the World Health Organization, and children are particularly vulnerable. It can cause reading deficiencies in children and lead to long-term health issues such as dementia, cardiovascular issues, diabetes and so on.

According to the most up-to-date research from the World Health Organization, among many other expert bodies, children should be in an indoor learning environment of less than 35 dB and 55 dB outdoors, which is also the Cranston city ordinance. Readings collected by Brown University in 2023 were over 500 times above ordinance levels, as the decibel scale is logarithmic and not linear. It is stunning that we still have to defend our position so fervently after that proof. I have taken videos of games at Cranston West as the sounds of rifle shots ring out over the field and no one flinches; this alone is disturbing. We live in a world where kids do active-shooter drills in school, but we expect them to learn to ignore it in Western Cranston.

I have knocked on many doors over this last year and have spoken to parents who expressed concern about the gunfire. I find it hard to believe that these parents would express this concern to me, a stranger at their doorstep, and not to their children’s teachers or administrators at the school.

This leads me to where the noise levels were described as “safe” and “under the limits.” I work from home and can attest that it’s so loud most days that I can’t concentrate and my focus is repeatedly broken and it often triggers migraines, too. With readings coming in 500 times over the limit, no wonder. Why is someone with no expertise in this field of study trying to convince the public that the sound is “safe” when every actual expert I have ever spoken to has said the exact opposite, and usually with great alarm?  

Western Cranston’s parents should be angered over the inertia of our city government in rectifying this simple issue. This could be a layup, an easy win, yet, they continue to waste our time and delay when they could simply make this a priority and deal with it. All should approach the narrative from city officials on this issue with skepticism, as they seem to repeat inaccuracies to change the narrative to us being anti-police or anti-gun. We have been extremely clear that we are not anti-police. Many of my neighbors own guns and support our police. Yet, we cannot focus in our homes while we work, our dogs shiver in fear and our children don’t get to enjoy warm spring days in our yard because the volume is at unsafe levels.

Finally, I challenge our city leadership to present any professional body of research by public health or mental health professionals in support of the situation and present it to the public. I am confident that they will find exactly none because the evidence is conclusive that noise pollution is extremely detrimental to our physical health, and is particularly detrimental to our children's. If Providence can move its shooting range to the middle of the woods in Scituate, then why can’t we take similar measures to protect our community? In the dog-whistled words of this administration during this last election cycle, “We don’t want to be like Providence.” Frankly, maybe we’d be better off in Meshanticut if we were. Enough is enough.