FIRST-IN-THE-NATION MEDICAL ANALYSIS: The Hidden Health Impact of Pickleball Noise on Neighbors
Media Contact: Nalini Lasiewicz Executive Director, The Robert and Nalini Lasiewicz Foundation Phone: 818-249-9691 Email: nalini@lasiewicz.org Web: https://lasiewicz.org
NEW ORLEANS, LA – MAY 19, 2025 – As pickleball’s popularity explodes nationwide, a groundbreaking medical analysis reveals the concerning physiological and psychological effects of its signature impulsive noise on nearby residents. This first-of-its-kind investigation demands the attention of public health officials, researchers, and communities grappling with this emerging issue.
Kathleen Romito, MD, Medical Advisor to the Lasiewicz Foundation (La Cañada Flintridge, CA), will present preliminary findings live in New Orleans this week during the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) annual meeting at the New Orleans Marriott. Dr. Romito’s presentation, “Session 4aPP — Pickleball noise – A qualitative description of the psychological and physiological effects on nearby residents” will take place on Thursday, May 22, 2025, from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM CT. Her accompanying paper is co-authored with Daniel Fink, MD.
Dr. Romito’s analysis of public data, including social media, news reports, and legal filings, indicates a potential link between persistent pickleball “pop” and serious non-auditory health impacts reported by neighbors. These include anxiety, sleep disruption, the novel phenomenon of phantom pickleball sounds, and alarmingly, PTSD-like symptoms and suicidal ideation. The study also highlights self-reported cardiac and neurological complaints.
This presentation is a crucial opportunity for journalists to:
Be the first to report on this novel medical analysis highlighting a potential public health concern linked to a rapidly growing sport.
Interview Dr. Kathleen Romito, MD, a medical professional on the front lines of this emerging issue.
Gain access to preliminary data and insights into the surprising ways impulsive noise may be affecting communities.
Capture a unique angle on the ongoing discussion surrounding pickleball’s impact on neighborhoods.
“We are urgently calling on the research community, the pickleball industry, and community leaders to bring their attention to this emerging and serious concern” states Dr. Romito. “With over 50,000 pickleball courts across the U.S. and more being built every week, understanding the potential health consequences for nearby residents is paramount. This initial analysis underscores the urgent need for further, comprehensive research.”
CREDENTIALED MEDIA WELCOME: The Acoustical Society of America offers free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. For registration details, please contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org.
About the Robert and Nalini Lasiewicz Foundation: The Robert and Nalini Lasiewicz Foundation is a California 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to connecting researchers, policymakers, noise experts, engineers, neighbors, players, vendors, and local governments to address the growing problem of noise in shared community spaces.
–The research described in this Acoustics Lay Language Paper may not have yet been peer reviewed–
Most people take their ability to understand speech for granted until they have a hearing loss. However, approximately 25 million Americans with clinically normal hearing still report experiencing hearing difficulties substantial enough to negatively impact their daily lives. The extra mental effort that these individuals exert during listening appears to come at the cost of reduced ability to participate in social interactions, greater fatigue, and poorer performance on other daily life functions, such as memory for speech. There is currently no standard objective test that quantifies the increased listening effort that these individuals experience, and we are exploring possibilities for this with our research.
Changes in the pupil size of the eye during difficult listening can be used to measure listening effort. Typically, this measurement requires listeners to keep their heads still while a specialized, expensive infrared camera system tracks changes in the listener’s pupils while they listen. In recent years, virtual reality headsets have emerged as a possible alternative to these laboratory-based eye-tracking systems. Virtual reality headsets were also originally developed as research tools that were primarily used in the laboratory, but they are now widely marketed for entertainment and gaming applications. The most advanced virtual reality headsets now incorporate eye-tracking technology capable of making continuous measurements of eye gaze direction and pupil size. Virtual reality headsets are less expensive than laboratory eye-tracking systems, they are more portable, and they require fewer movement restrictions during the eye measurements. All of these factors could make virtual reality headsets more appealing than traditional eye trackers for clinical applications. However, it is not known how comparable listening effort measurements are across these research-grade and virtual-reality eye-tracking systems.
The purpose of our study was to directly compare the ability of research and virtual reality systems to monitor changes in listening effort via changes in pupil dilation. Participants with normal hearing listened to and recalled digits played in the right ear. Sometimes they had to ignore distracting digits that were also played in the left ear. As in our previous studies, we found that the addition of the distracting digits caused a systematic increase in the pupil size measured by a laboratory-grade eye tracker, presumably because it required an increase in listening effort. We also found that the same effort-related increase in pupil size could be measured with a low-cost virtual-reality headset, opening up the possibility that these systems could be used to conduct objective measures of listening effort in clinical environments.
Our research also revealed important potential limitations to consider with using virtual reality headsets to measure listening effort in a clinical setting. These include subtle quality differences in the measurements, rapidly changing technology, and the programming requirements to set up these systems for this application. Our ongoing work aims to address these concerns as we see potential for clinical use of virtual reality systems for listening effort applications in audiology. The ability to validate patient complaints of hearing difficulties with objective clinical metrics will allow for the development interventions to mitigate listening effort and ultimately improve the quality of life for the millions of people experiencing hearing difficulties.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Department of Defense or U.S. Government.
Quiet Communities, Scientific Advisory Board, The Robert and Nalini Lasiewicz Foundation, BOISE, ID, 83703-1000, United States
Daniel Fink – DJFink@thequietcoalition.org
Program Chair, The Quiet Coalition
A program of Quiet Communities, Inc.
60 Thoreau Street Suite 261
Concord, MA 01742
–The research described in this Acoustics Lay Language Paper may not have yet been peer reviewed–
New research shows that pickleball noise appears to raise major health concerns for residents living near courts. Pickleball is a racquet sport like tennis, but is played on smaller courts with hard wood or fiberglass paddles and hard plastic balls similar to whiffle balls. Instead of the softer “ping” heard during tennis, pickleball play makes a piercing “pop” sound. Pickleball started increasing in popularity during Covid, and many residents living near courts have now had several years of daily exposure to the popping noise.
How does pickleball noise affect the neighbors? Image source: Nicholas Klein, Istock photo 1746673904, 2023
Our study found that disrupted sleep, cardiac, and neurologic issues were the most common self-reported physical symptoms from nearby neighbors as shown in Figure 1. Hearing phantom pops appears to be a new type of phenomenon that can’t be completely explained yet, but may represent changes in brain processing systems.
Figure 1: Self-reported physical symptoms from pickleball noise exposure.
Self-reported psychological symptoms included mental health problems, mentions of trauma, and “red flag” complaints including severe distress, mention of torture, and suicidal thoughts as shown in Figure 2. An example of a comment that was classified as “severe distress” is: “No one would choose to live this way. It is physically and emotionally debilitating”.
Figure 2: Self-reported psychological symptoms from pickleball noise exposure.
Why do those living near pickleball courts feel this way?
The piercing “pop” comes from a sudden, loud burst of sound called impulse noise. Impulse noise is characterized by short duration with a sharp rise and decrease, as shown below in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Pickleball noise sound pressure trace. Image courtesy of Lance Willis, Spenderian and Willis, Tucson, AZ.
Listen to this audio below to hear the sound generated by 4 pickleball courts.
An acoustic study of one neighbor’s experience found up to 2800 pickleball pops per hour, for a total of 21,208 pops in one day as shown in Figure 4. That’s a lot of disruptive impulse noise to endure. And to make it even worse, the frequency of the “popping” sound (about 1200 Hertz) is the same as back up alarms for vehicles.
Figure 4: One day, 4 courts, hourly distribution of 21,208 total pops. Image courtesy of Noise Net Operations US, Inc.
It’s not unusual for those living near pickleball courts to be exposed to this repetitive impulse noise more than 90 hours/week. That might be more than 100,000 pickleball pops a week! Figure 5 demonstrates a day for busy courts open from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m.
Figure 5: A typical day of pickleball noise exposure for a neighbor near busy courts.
While some workplace studies have examined impulse noise and hearing loss, our study is the first to explore its health effects on the general public. Long-term exposure to impulse noise wasn’t a public concern until pickleball courts were built near homes. In some cases, the popping is even heard inside people’s homes.
We used a research method called content analysis to analyze public comments in news reports, legal filings and social media, spotting early trends by grouping and counting similar comments. While not definitive, this method helps identify problems, guide research, and spark discussion.
Local noise ordinances often focus on average sound levels (decibels) and don’t regulate repetitive impulse noise like pickleball. Unfortunately, most noise studies don’t consider all the factors that affect how people actually perceive such noise, especially the repetitive impulse noise hours a day from pickleball play. As pickleball noise expert and referee Bob Unetich told NPR in 2023, “You can’t take pop, pop, pop for 12 hours a day every day and remain sane.”
We need more research on how long-term impulse noise affects the health of people living near pickleball courts. Future studies could look at what makes pickleball noise unique, how this kind of noise impacts people’s minds and bodies, how far courts should be from homes, and how well different noise-reducing methods work.
So far, we aren’t aware of any courts within 100 feet of homes that have been successfully quieted. Until more is known, we recommend that courts not be placed within 100 feet of homes and that courts within 1,000 feet of homes receive close attention. Sound evaluations by engineers should look at more than just how loud the sound is. All the factors that affect how humans perceive sound should be considered.
There is no doubt that pickleball is lots of fun for those who play, but it raises major health concerns for those living near the courts.
MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 19, 2024 – Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 50 million people worldwide, often devastating both the individuals who have it and their families and loved ones. It has no known cure, and the slow, progressive nature of the disease makes early diagnosis difficult.
Researchers from École de Technologie Supérieure and Dartmouth University are investigating the use of earpiece microphones to spot early signs of Alzheimer’s. Miriam Boutros will present their work on Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 4:15 p.m. ET, as part of the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running Nov. 18-22, 2024.
People with Alzheimer’s exhibit a loss of motor control along with cognitive decline. One of the earliest signs of this decay can be spotted in involuntary eye movements known as saccades. These quick twitches of the eyes in Alzheimer’s patients are often slower, less accurate, or delayed compared to those in healthy individuals.
The researchers will track abnormal saccades, an early sign of Alzheimer’s, using both eye-tracking technology and in-ear hearables. Credit: Boutros et al.
“Eye movements are fascinating since they are some of the most rapid and precise movements in the human body, thus they rely on both excellent motor skills and cognitive functioning,” said researcher Arian Shamei.
Detecting and analyzing saccades directly requires a patient to be monitored by eye-tracking equipment, which is not easily accessible for most people. Boutros and her colleagues are exploring an alternative method using a more ubiquitous and less intrusive technology: earpiece microphones. This research is led by Rachel Bouserhal at the Research in Hearing Health and Assistive Devices (RHAD) Laboratory at École de Technologie Supérieure and Chris Niemczak at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University.
“We are using a device called a hearable,” said Boutros. “It is an earpiece with in-ear microphones that captures physiological signals from the body. Our goal is to develop health-monitoring algorithms for hearables, capable of continuous, long-term monitoring and early disease detection.”
Eye movements, including saccades, cause eardrum vibrations that can be picked up by sensitive microphones located within the ear. The researchers are conducting experiments with volunteers, giving them both hearables and conventional eye trackers. Their goal is to identify signals corresponding to saccades, and to differentiate between healthy signals and others that are indicative of neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s.
They hope one day their research will lead to devices that can perform noninvasive continuous monitoring for Alzheimer’s along with other neurological diseases.
“While the current project is focused on long-term monitoring of Alzheimer’s disease, eventually, we would like to tackle other diseases and be able to differentiate between them based on symptoms that can be tracked through in-ear signals,” said Shamei.
ASA PRESS ROOM In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.
LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.
PRESS REGISTRATION ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the virtual meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.
The University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada
Additional authors:
Sydney Norris, Sabrina Luk, Marcell Maitinsky, Md Jahurul Islam, and Bryan Gick
Popular version of 3pPP6 – The Role of Genre Association in Sung Dialect Categorization
Presented at the 187th ASA Meeting
Read the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0035323
–The research described in this Acoustics Lay Language Paper may not have yet been peer reviewed–
Have you ever listened to a song and later been surprised to hear the artist speak with a different accent than the one you heard in the song? Take country singer Keith Urban’s song “What About Me” for instance; when listening, you might assume that he has a Southern American (US) English accent. However, in his interviews, he speaks with an Australian English accent. So why did you think he sounded Southern?
Research suggests that specific accents or dialects are associated with musical genres [2], that singers adjust their accents based on genre [4]; and that foreign accents are more difficult to recognize in songs compared to speech [5]. However, when listeners perceive an accent in a song, it is unclear which type of information they rely on: the acoustic speech information or information about the musical genre. Our previous research investigated this question for Country and Reggae music and found that genre recognition may play a larger role in dialect perception than the actual sound of the voice [9].
Our current study explores American Blues and Folk music, genres that allow for easier separation of vocals from instrumentals, with more refined stimuli manipulation. Blues is strongly associated with African American English [3], while Folk can be associated with a variety of (British, American, etc.) dialects [1]. Participants listened to manipulated clips of sung and “spoken” lines taken from songs in both genres, which were transcribed for participants (see Figure 1). AI applications were used to remove instrumentals for both sung and spoken clips, while “spoken” clips also underwent rhythm and pitch normalization so that they sounded like spoken rather than sung speech. After hearing each sung or spoken line, participants were asked to identify the dialect they heard from six options [7, 8] (see Figure 2).
Figure 1: Participant view of a transcript from a Folk song clip.
Figure 2: Participant view of six dialect options after hearing a clip.
Participants were much more confident and accurate in categorizing accents for clips in the Sung condition, regardless of genre. The proportion of uncertainty (“Not Sure” responses) in the Spoken condition was consistent across genres (see “D” in Figure 3), suggesting that participants were more certain of dialect when musical cues were present. Dialect categories followed genre expectations, as can be seen from the increase in identifying African American English for Blues in the Sung condition (see “A”). Removing uncertainty by adding genre cues did not increase the likelihood of “Irish English” or “British English” being chosen for Blues, though it did for Folk (see “B” and “C” in Figure 3), in line with genre-based expectations.
Figure 3: Participant dialect responses.
These findings enhance our understanding of the relationship between musical genre and accent. Referring again to the example of Keith Urban, the singer’s stylistic accent change may not be the only culprit for our interpretation of a Southern drawl. Rather, we may have assumed we were listening to a musician with a Southern American English Accent when we heard the first banjo-like twang or tuned into iHeartCountry Radio. When we listen to a song and perceive a singer’s accent, we are not only listening to the sounds of their speech, but are also shaping our perception from our expectations of dialect based on the musical genre.
References:
Carrigan, J., Henry L. (2004). Lornell, kip. the NPR curious listener’s guide to american folk music. Library Journal (1976), 129(19), 63.
De Timmerman, Romeo, et al. (2024). The globalization of local indexicalities through music: African‐American English and the blues. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12616.
Gibson, A. M. (2019). Sociophonetics of popular music: insights from corpus analysis and speech perception experiments [Doctoral dissertation, University of Canterbury]. http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/4007.
Mageau, M., Mekik, C., Sokalski, A., & Toivonen, I. (2019). Detecting foreign accents in song. Phonetica, 76(6), 429–447. https://doi.org/10.1159/000500187.
RStudio. (2020). RStudio: Integrated Development for R. RStudio, PBC, Boston, MA. http://www.rstudio.com/.
Stoet, G. (2010). PsyToolkit – A software package for programming psychological experiments using Linux. Behavior Research Methods, 42(4), 1096-1104.
Stoet, G. (2017). PsyToolkit: A novel web-based method for running online questionnaires and reaction-time experiments. Teaching of Psychology, 44(1), 24-31.
Walter, M., Bengtson, G., Maitinsky, M., Islam, M. J., & Gick, B. (2023). Dialect perception in song versus speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 154(4_supplement), A161. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0023131.
OTTAWA, Ontario, May 16, 2024 – Oscar Wilde once said that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence. Perhaps that is due to how difficult it is to use and understand. Sarcasm is notoriously tricky to convey through text — even in person, it can be easily misinterpreted. The subtle changes in tone that convey sarcasm often confuse computer algorithms as well, limiting virtual assistants and content analysis tools.
Xiyuan Gao, Shekhar Nayak, and Matt Coler of Speech Technology Lab at the University of Groningen, Campus Fryslân developed a multimodal algorithm for improved sarcasm detection that examines multiple aspects of audio recordings for increased accuracy. Gao will present their work Thursday, May 16, at 10:35 a.m. EDT as part of a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Canadian Acoustical Association, running May 13-17 at the Shaw Centre located in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Using text recognition, incorporating emoticons, and introducing audio analysis, researchers designed a robust system for detecting sarcasm in human speech. Image credit: This image was created with the assistance of DALL•E 3.
Traditional sarcasm detection algorithms often rely on a single parameter to produce their results, which is the main reason they often fall short. Gao, Nayak, and Coler instead used two complementary approaches — sentiment analysis using text and emotion recognition using audio — for a more complete picture.
“We extracted acoustic parameters such as pitch, speaking rate, and energy from speech, then used Automatic Speech Recognition to transcribe the speech into text for sentiment analysis,” said Gao. “Next, we assigned emoticons to each speech segment, reflecting its emotional content. By integrating these multimodal cues into a machine learning algorithm, our approach leverages the combined strengths of auditory and textual information along with emoticons for a comprehensive analysis.”
The team is optimistic about the performance of their algorithm, but they are already looking for ways to improve it further.
“There are a range of expressions and gestures people use to highlight sarcastic elements in speech,” said Gao. “These need to be better integrated into our project. In addition, we would like to include more languages and adopt developing sarcasm recognition techniques.”
This approach can be used for more than identifying a dry wit. The researchers highlight that this technique can be widely applied in many fields.
“The development of sarcasm recognition technology can benefit other research domains using sentiment analysis and emotion recognition,” said Gao. “Traditionally, sentiment analysis mainly focuses on text and is developed for applications such as online hate speech detection and customer opinion mining. Emotion recognition based on speech can be applied to AI-assisted health care. Sarcasm recognition technology that applies a multimodal approach is insightful to these research domains.”
ASA PRESS ROOM In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.
LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.
PRESS REGISTRATION ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the in-person meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.
ABOUT THE CANADIAN ACOUSTICAL ASSOCIATION/ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE D’ACOUSTIQUE
fosters communication among people working in all areas of acoustics in Canada
promotes the growth and practical application of knowledge in acoustics
encourages education, research, protection of the environment, and employment in acoustics
is an umbrella organization through which general issues in education, employment and research can be addressed at a national and multidisciplinary level
The CAA is a member society of the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (I-INCE) and the International Commission for Acoustics (ICA), and is an affiliate society of the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV). Visit https://caa-aca.ca/.
Figure 2: Self-reported psychological symptoms from pickleball noise exposure.
Figure 3: Pickleball noise sound pressure trace. Image courtesy of Lance Willis, Spenderian and Willis, Tucson, AZ.
Figure 4: One day, 4 courts, hourly distribution of 21,208 total pops. Image courtesy of Noise Net Operations US, Inc.
Figure 5: A typical day of pickleball noise exposure for a neighbor near busy courts.
Figure 1: Participant view of a transcript from a Folk song clip.
Figure 2: Participant view of six dialect options after hearing a clip.
Figure 3: Participant dialect responses.