The Environmental Footprint of the Largest Instrument in the World

 MUSI 3041 Assignment 4

Chong Tsz Yen Hayley

Does the Largest Instrument in the World have the Largest Environmental Footprint?

    The pipe organ is known as the largest instrument in symphonic music, its size being so massive and costly to build that not all concert halls have it. The biggest pipe organ in the world is located in the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the United States, occupying half the space of the building. The organ took 3 years to build and weighs approximately 150 tons, it also has 33,114 pipes to generate sounds stronger than a dozen orchestras.

(a photo of the console of the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium pipe organ)

    A pipe organ produces sound by driving wind up the organ pipes, the wind is controlled by one or more keyboards called manuals, a pedal clavier controlled by the feet and a group of stops. They are all located in the console of the organ, where the organists operate the instrument. The keys and pedals of the console were traditionally made with ivory and wood, but for modern day organs, polystyrene or other plastics are more commonly used. Another important part of the organ are the pipes, since one pipe only produces a single pitch, a large number of pipes are needed to accommodate the musical scale. There are two types of pipes commonly used according to the design and timbre of the organ, they are flue pipes and reed pipes. The pipes can be made from metal or wood, materials ranging from lead, tin, iron, copper and zinc to sugar pine, fir, oak and bamboo.

(a photo of the pipes of the Létourneau Pipe Organ)

    Lead is a common material used for the pipes of organs, an extremely toxic metal infamous for causing serious health consequences if under long-term exposure. High levels of exposure could cause damage to the brain and the central nervous system, leading to coma, convulsions and even death. Not only does lead cause irreversible damage to our health, it also causes irreversible damage to the environment. In 2006, the pipe organ industry in the European Union was disrupted due to an environmental law that restricted the amount of lead used in the production of pipes.

    In the metal industry, the production of lead causes the greatest environmental degradation. The environment is contaminated due to the production processes which include mining, smelting and manufacturing. Lead mining and smelting contributes to soil pollution and soil degradation. When lead is being mined, waste and by-products are produced, which includes wastewater with heavy metal content, including toxic metals like cadmium and lead. Smelting is a process where the lead ore is heated for extraction, or the lead is recovered using chemical reducing agents. Only pure and usable forms of lead are retained, the waste produced that includes impure lead and other toxic substances may leech into the surrounding soil, causing the soil to be polluted. Crops growing near lead industries or on contaminated land appear to accumulate cadmium, lead and zinc. These crops are exposed to pollutants through absorbing heavy metals from the polluted soil. Pollution accumulates most in leaf vegetables, followed by bulb vegetables and root vegetables, causing all vegetation grown on polluted land to be unfit for human consumption. The plot of land with the contaminated soil will also be unfit for any types of future cultivation.

(a photo showing soil polluted by heavy metals due to mining in China)

(a photo showing crops grown in contaminated soil)

    When there is heavy rain, toxic substances which include heavy metals and chemicals will migrate into the water supply from the polluted soil. This would further contaminate the land as unaffected soil absorbs the polluted water, causing more land to be unfit for growing crops. Moreover, streams, rivers and lakes would be polluted. Water pollution have severe ecological consequences, such as disrupting food chains of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

(a photo showing a stream polluted by heavy metals)

    As mentioned in the introduction, pipe organs are ginormous instruments. Some have a few dozen pipes and some have tens of thousands of pipes, depending on the design and structure of the pipe organ, which varies among one another. Although pipe organs are not mass produced instruments, a single organ built for a standard concert hall uses at least 50 tons of metal to produce the pipes, with most of them containing lead. The environmental footprint of a pipe organ is incredibly large, however buying used pipes from the secondary markets or recycling old pipes could help with decreasing the environmental impact caused by the construction of pipe organs.

Bibliography:

The Boardwalk Hall Organs. (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://www.atlanticcityexperience.org/the-boardwalk-hall-organs.html

NPR. (2006, March 26). EU Pipe-Organ Makers Caught in Environmental Flap. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5302205

Fun Facts. (2016, August 11). https://worcaud.com/organ/fun-facts/

SWD_2017_0023_FIN.ENG.xhtml.1_EN_impact_assessment_part1_v2.docx. (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52017SC0023

Zhang, X., Yang, L., Li, Y., Li, H., Wang, W., & Ye, B. (2011). Impacts of lead/zinc mining and smelting on the environment and human health in China. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 184(4), 2261–2273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-011-2115-6