Remembering Arline L. Bronzaft
1936‒2025
Arline L Bronzaft, Ph.D., our dear colleague, mentor, and friend, passed away peacefully on October 29, 2025, surrounded by her family. There are no words to express how very fortunate we were to have her as a spirited advisor and friend over the past 10 years. She co-founded the Quiet Coalition, a program of Quiet Communities, and served as the honorary chair of our Quiet American Skies program. She wrote innumerable posts for our blog on topics from airplanes to birds, and assisted countless individuals and communities who sought help with their noise problems.
Arline was a pioneer and a woman of great courage, intelligence, and compassion. She was an environmental psychologist, professor, researcher, author, and expert in her field. Her groundbreaking research, starting in the mid-1970s, made clear the harmful effects that noise had on learning, cognition, and health. She stood up for women in the workplace and fought for social justice. She understood the importance of research but knew that enough research had been done to support policies to protect the public and the environment. Many of us have heard the story of her young daughter who, decades ago, could not understand why a study was needed to demonstrate that noise negatively affects children's learning – because it’s so obvious!
“If we really believed, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,’ we’d have a much better world…not just with respect to noise.”
Arline appreciated that it took more than academic research to make change happen. She invested herself in the lived experience of noise-impacted individuals and communities so she could truly understand their problems; something that technical measures and statistical research do not adequately convey. She forged relationships with people in power – including public officials and leaders at the New York City Transit Authority and the Federal Aviation Administration – knowing that collaboration was necessary to solving problems. In 2007, she worked with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to update its noise code – a code which has become a model for other cities – and she was awarded the Citizen Psychologist Presidential Citation by the American Psychological Association in 2018 for her sustained community activities in NYC.
Arline was full of love, good humor, knowledge, and insight that she shared with the people around her. She delighted as much in the success of others as she did in her own. As part of her long tenure with the community-based environmental action group, GrowNYC, through five mayoral administrations, she created the Sound and Noise education module for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection to educate people about the harms of noise and wrote a children’s book, Listen to the Raindrops, that we were fortunate to be able to offer our members last year. Finally, Arline spoke up about the need for respect and civility in our society. "If we really believed, 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,' we'd have a much better world...Not just with respect to noise," she said in a 2024 interview for the Chilltown Blues blog.
We will miss Arline’s warmth and wisdom. ❖
