The Air We Breathe and the Noise We Live In

This is a cleaned-up, edited version of a dictated first-person statement. It serves as the case-study foundation for the environmental quality policy area.

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Air quality in Israel remains a significant issue. Levels here are noticeably worse than in European cities, and even than in New York City.

Some of this is environmental — geography, dust, the region we live in. But in other cases the causes are known. In Jerusalem we have a clear case study in front of us: the sharp drop in traffic on Shabbat greatly reduces air pollution. We can see the effect of the cause, weekly.

Noise is a health hazard, not an inconvenience

Noise pollution is increasingly — and deservedly — being recognised as a health hazard. Urban noise from unabated construction is a major quality-of-life issue for anyone living where construction is significant and ongoing, which is most of the country, and especially, at the moment, Jerusalem.

Noisy excavations here can continue for months on end with no clarity offered to the surrounding community: no clarity about how the permits were authorised, what noise mitigation measures were required, or whether anyone is monitoring compliance.

Monitoring is far below the threshold

Monitoring efforts for both air pollution and noise pollution are insufficiently developed — far below the threshold needed for granular data access.

National air pollution data should be accessible through a public API, with no authentication and no workarounds required in order to gather it. The current standard of access is beneath what it should be.

This should be a standard of access across government — including the kind of API implementation offered for open banking. This data was generated by organisations funded by the taxpayer, and therefore properly belongs to them. Any impediment to unhindered technological access, including access by AI agents, cannot be defended.