Noise Levels in Sawdust, FL | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
53 dBA
Average noise across Sawdust
Quiet office to normal conversation
13
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
29% of Sawdust residents
78 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Sawdust at 100-meter resolution, combining road, aviation, and rail sources. Green areas measure below 45 dBA. Orange and red exceed the EPA's 55 dBA outdoor threshold linked to long-term health effects. Use the layer toggles to view each source on its own or all together.
Overall
Road
Rail
Aviation
Click the map to explore
35 dBa55 dBa (EPA limit)90+ dBa
3545557090
Quietest (dBA)Loudest
Colorblind friendlyoff
What the numbers sound like
30 dBAWhisper
40 dBASoft rainfall
45 dBAQuiet suburban street at night
50 dBAQuiet office
55 dBAEPA outdoor threshold: light traffic 100 ft away
60 dBANormal conversation an arm's length away
65 dBABusy restaurant
70 dBAHighway traffic 50 ft away
80 dBACity bus interior
Population Above the EPA Outdoor Threshold
The EPA's 55 dBA outdoor reference level is a common benchmark for residential noise exposure, especially for activity interference, annoyance, and long-term community noise concerns. About 13 Sawdust residents, or 29.2%, live above that level. By land area, 36.6% of Sawdust is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Sawdust residents, grouped by direction from the center of Sawdust. Eastern Sawdust carries the highest population-weighted average; Western Sawdust carries the lowest. Just 3% of residents in Western Sawdust live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Eastern Sawdust.
Eastern Sawdust
69.3 dBA · Loud
Highway traffic 50 ft away
100% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Sawdust
52.5 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation
10% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Sawdust
45.5 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet suburban street at night
3% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Sawdust sounds about 421% louder than Western Sawdust to the human ear, a 23.8 dBA gap. Every 10 dBA roughly doubles perceived loudness. Within any of these directions, two homes a quarter mile apart can still differ by 10 or more dBA depending on how close they sit to a major highway.
How far back from I-10 do you need to be?
I-10 produces an estimated 75 dBA at its loudest centerline points. Noise drops logarithmically with distance, with the exact rate depending on what's between you and the road. Tree cover, walls, terrain, and pavement type all matter. At roughly a quarter mile back, traffic fades into the noise level of a soft rainfall.
At source
75 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
61 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
330 ft
53 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
660 ft
45 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
¼ mile
37 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 38% of Sawdust sits under tree canopy (about average for cities) and roughly 36% is impervious surface like pavement and rooftops. Both are folded into the per-place decay rate above. Heavier canopy pulls noise down faster with distance; impervious surfaces slow the drop.
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How Noise Is Distributed Across Sawdust
The bar chart below shows the share of Sawdust residents in each noise band. About 74% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 26% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Sawdust Compares
Sawdust sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Sawdust's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Rosedale, Leonards, Hardin Heights, and Sumatra.
Average noise level (dBA)
Sawdust's 53.1 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. Florida as a whole averages 51.6 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Sawdust because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 29.2% of Sawdust residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's more than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 36.6% of Sawdust's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Florida average of 31.8% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Sawdust
Distance from highways matters more than the neighborhood name. Two homes in the same zip code can differ by 20 dBA if one sits 100 meters from I-10 and the other 500 meters away. The model captures this at 100-meter resolution, so noise exposure changes block by block.
Tree canopy can help reduce modeled noise exposure. Roughly 38% of Sawdust is under tree cover (about average for cities), and the dominant land cover is medium-intensity developed land. Both are measured from federal USDA Forest Service and USGS satellite imagery at 30-meter resolution. Streets with 60% or higher canopy show 3 to 5 dBA lower noise than comparable streets with bare ground or pavement, which is why the per-place decay rate above already accounts for it.
Sources & Methodology
The BestNeighborhood noise model is calibrated against nearly one million federal ground-truth measurements across four states. Road noise is computed from segment-level federal traffic data and propagated outward using physics-based acoustic decay, with attenuation rates that depend on the surrounding land cover.
All inputs are published federal datasets. Block-level noise is computed by combining road, rail, and aviation sound sources in the energy domain, the same physics used in professional environmental noise assessments. Read the full methodology.
