[NPC Clearinghouse]

"Good neighbors keep their noise to themselves."

Search Help

Initial Searches
Advanced Searches

 

Initial Searches

The NPC Search Feature enables you to quickly find information related to your area of concern. For example, if you are interested in finding communities that have or are considering a ban on leaf blowers, type in the words leafblower ban. If you are interested to learn more about active noise cancellation technology, type the key words active noise cancellation. If you are interested in knowing about noise in your community, type your city, state, or country. The search will return the headline or title, as well as the number of times the word or words occurred in the text. Just click on the headlines or titles that you find most interesting, and use the "Back" to return to the Search Page.

For some word searches, like leafblowers, there may be variations of the word, such as leaf blower, leaf blowers, and leaf blower. To be assured that you find all occurrences, you should include all variations. Do not type any words twice, however. The following would work: leaf blower blowers leafblower leafblowers.


Advanced Searches

You may further refine your search using the and, or, and and not.

Typical multiple word searches search for the occurrence of any word listed (they use the or function). Some of the occurrences of these words may have nothing to do with what you are interested in, however. For example, if you are interested in learning about airport noise in New York, and you type airport new york you will find information about airport noise in New York. You will also find information about many "new" products, "new" ordinances, New Jersey, New Mexico, New England, etc. You will also find information about hundreds of other airports.

To better refine your search, use the word and between each word. For example, airport and new and york. And and or are the most common searches you are likely to preform.

In a few cases, the search might return too much information. In the above example, you still might find information about a new airport in York Pennsylvania. If there were so many entries about York Pennsylvania that you could not easily find what you wanted, you could further limit the search by typing new and york and airport and not pennsylvania.