Using automated enforcement to catch noise polluters.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Karino. cities from New York and D.C. to Knoxville and Albuquerque are studying a new way to address noise pollution.

Installing what looks like an army of radio reporters on the streets.

Okay, they're actually noise cameras

with giant microphones that activate

when a loud car passes by, snap a photo,

and issue a ticket.

Erica Walker is an epidemiologist at Brown University and

founder of the Community Noise Lab and she's skeptical of these devices.

So I'm probably the odd man out here but I don't necessarily think that noise cameras are the right way to do things.

I could work in certain situations.

For me I'd like to kind of take a step back.

So in a lot of my research, we have looked at noise complaints

and the distribution of noise complaints took over the city.

And we see that noise complaints can be used to target certain parts of a

community that people deem to be undesirable. I haven't seen that and seeing things

like age and race be factors that influence, you know, people's complaints.

I just kind of feel like noise cameras can unnecessarily target certain people in the community.

It's important for us to strike a balance between sound levels that can cause harm,

but we also want to appreciate the cultural aspects, the acoustical culture of a community and I think that we don't want every city or every community to sound the same.

And so when I think about these kind of measures

...