Editor,

I disagree with one part of a Feb. 22 Whidbey News-Times article. The state health board linking jet noise to health risks was not a “win” for Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve.

The only “win” will be when county officials begin to own up and actually take remedial actions to protect Island County citizens.

It is true the authors of the draft EIS proclaimed no proof-positive link has been established, thereby greasing its tracks to dismiss Growler noise impacts on health. It mirrors the empty-headed proclamations the tobacco industry attempted in the 1970s to deny any impacts of cigarette smoke on health.

Here are four interesting facts the EIS authors cannot refute:

• Of those 25 “experts” who prepared the draft EIS and concluded no health impacts, not one had medical credentials.

Here are the closest: four have bachelors degrees in marine science, biology, and animal science and one has a masters degree in biology.

• Growler noise levels, and especially their low-frequency components, are not safe for pregnant women, which is why the Navy will not allow pregnant women to work in noise areas far below the noise levels residents under the touch/go path experience;

• The noise levels under the path are many multiples over the Navy threshold for designating what they term a “hazardous noise zone.” Anyone working in such areas is enrolled in a special program, required to wear high-tech hearing protection, and undergo routine health monitoring;

• What is known as the “Schultz curve,” which Congress and the FAA codified nearly a half-century ago, was a threshold of 65 DNL as the level at which folks became highly annoyed by noise. But recently, acoustic scientists from over 100 countries, including the U.S. and Canada, found errors in the Schultz curve such that the actual threshold is 55 DNL, not 65. Note: a 10 dB difference — twice as loud. The draft EIS, however, bases everything on 65 DNL.

The Navy knows all of these irrefutable facts — knows about the impacts — but nowhere do they reveal any of that in the draft EIS.

And the impacts go on and on.

Robert Wilbur

Coupeville