Noise pollution

There Is Too Much Noise In The Modern World One of the great plagues of modern life is barely talked about at all. People tend to think they’re the only ones bothered by it and to raise a fuss would be to act like some cantankerous crazy person. They also tend to dismiss it as nothing more than a harmless and occasional irritant. In fact, it is a serious issue which can have damaging effects on our physical and intellectual health and our general sense of well-being. It is, paradoxically, a silent killer : Noise.

If you enjoy listening to music, you will tend to find your enjoyment of it constantly disrupted by external noise sources. Perhaps if you listen to intense, wall-of-sound music, such as heavy metal, at high volumes, you can successfully screen the world out, but not all music is of this nature. Many serious musicians and musicologists agree that the finest music ever written is Beethoven’s late string quartets. Subtle and spiritual, punctuated with pauses and quiet passages, it would be today almost impossible to get through a listening of it from beginning to end without enduring an interruption of some sort. Whether it’s an ice cream van playing its cacophonous chimes, an aircraft flying overhead, a noisy neighbour with a gardening machine, a car alarm going off or just traffic rumbling along outside, you can be certain that something will turn up to disrupt your enjoyment. In summer, when the sun is out, you can be sure that neighbours with noisy gardening machines are going to be out too. Thanks to them, the average afternoon spent sunbathing in the garden is going to sound much like it would if you were sunbathing in the middle of a car factory instead. Was this changeover to electrified gardening equipment really necessary? Did all the many generations of human beings before us not manage to tend their crops and gardens perfectly well without it? Curiously, some of this invasive noise even has statutory protection. I find it amazing, for example, that the clangourous music of ice cream vans is specifically sanctioned by law. If a greedy hawker of wares decided to stand outside your house with a loudspeaker and read out a list of what he was selling, there is no doubt that he would contravening some local ordinance and the police would soon put a stop to it. Make it music instead of speech and put it in a van, however, and suddenly he enjoys legal protections. In recent decades the popularity of fireworks has dramatically increased in Britain. Once reserved for special occasions such as the celebration of the judicial murder of freedom fighter Guy Fawkes on November 5th, they now seem to be used for weeks if not months stretching both before and after this hallowed date. The evenings of autumnal Britain are now regularly punctuated by the sighs, shrieks and pops of fireworks exploding. Dogs run around frightened in the home, trembling with fear as they move from room to room in a vain attempt to escape the sounds that haunt them. Do you ever hear birds singing at night where you live? Ever wondered why they do this? Researchers found that birds had started singing at night because it was the only time they could find enough peace and quiet to facilitate this mode of communication. Competition from noise pollution during the day was so great that they thought it wasn’t worth bothering then. We tend to think of noise as no more than an irritant. But this is to underestimate its effects. Studies have shown that the presence of noise can induce or aggravate serious health problems. For example, numerous studies have found that those regularly subjected to the noise of overflying aircraft suffer from high blood pressure to a much greater extent than those living elsewhere. Even noise of which we are not consciously aware, because it occurs at night and we are asleep, can have a damaging effect on our health. In fact, research as shown that noise can bother us and adversely affect our health before we are even born! Babies in the womb can react to noise and studies have found that women living in the presence of environmental noise are more likely to suffer complications during childbirth or give birth to children with birth defects. Exposure to noise releases stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol and noradrenalin into our bloodstream. The presence of these hormones is linked to death through heart-related illness. The World Health Organisation (WHO) studied the issue of noise-related illness in Europe and concluded that approximately 3% of all deaths through heart complications could be attributed to noise. In Britain, this means that between 3000 and 4000 people are dying each year because of noise, far more than have ever died, or are ever likely to die, through terrorism. It’s a silent September 11th occurring each year. Yet no one cares about it. No one is proposing to overhaul our societies, do away with our civil liberties or reshape world politics in response to the problem of noise pollution. The European Commission considers that living close to an airport is a significant risk factor for heart-related health problems. Moreover, it found that 20% of the European Union’s entire population fell into this category. Noise also disrupts our concentration. A study of pupils at a school in Munich examined the effects of aircraft noise on pupils’ learning. The school was in the flight path of Munich’s old airport. But because a new airport was being constructed in a different location, and the school would be outwith the flight path of the new airport, a comparison could be conducted. It found that the test results of the children improved dramatically once the noise was gone. This chimes perfectly with an international study which looked at the reading abilities of different groups of children who had varying levels of exposure to environmental noise, principally from overflying aircraft. It found that those subjected to the noise had a markedly lower reading age than the control groups. For a long time, the issue of noise was simply not on the public radar screen. There were no organisations dedicated to campaigning about it. It was not considered a serious issue. Thankfully, that is now beginning to change. In Britain, for example, there is now the Noise Association which campaigns on noise-related issues. Thanks to them, a Noise Action Week will take place between May 19-23. It is time that both we and the politicians who represent us began to take the problem of noise seriously. Laws and regulations designed to limit the impact of noise, and the mental and physical health problems which flow from it, should be introduced and enforced. And we should all begin to think about whether we are contributing to the problem, or to its solution.

What is Noise Pollution?

   

Noise pollution is a type of energy pollution in which distracting, irritating, or damaging sounds are freely audible. As with other forms of energy pollution (such as heat and lightpollution), noise pollution contaminants are not physical particles, but rather waves that interfere with naturally-occurring waves of a similar type in the same environment. Thus, the definition of noise pollution is open to debate, and there is no clear border as to which sounds may constitute noise pollution. In the most narrow sense, sounds are considered noise pollution if they adversely affect wildlife, human activity, or are capable of damaging physical structures on a regular, repeating basis. In the broadest sense of the term, a sound may be considered noise pollution if it disturbs any natural process or causes human harm, even if the sound does not occur on a regular basis.

The prevailing source of artificial noise pollution is from transportation. In rural areas, trainand airplane noise can disturb wildlife habits, thereby affecting the manner in which animals in areas around train tracks and airports hunt and mate. In urban areas, automobile, motorcycle, and even entertainment noise can cause sleep disruption in humans and animals, hearing loss, heart disease (as a result of stress), and in severe cases even mental instability. A notable exception to the rule is the electric, or hybrid-electric, automobile. Hybrid vehicles are so quite, in fact, that legislation is pending to actually make them louder. This is in response to numerous injuries in which pedestrians, unaware of a hybrid vehicle's presence, have been struck by such vehicles in parking lots and pedestrian crosswalks.

Although most developed nations have government agencies responsible for the protection of the environment, no nation has a single body that regulates noise pollution. In the United States, regulation of noise pollution was stripped from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and passed on the the individual states in the early 1980's. Although two noise-control bills passed by the EPA are still in effect, the agency can no longer form relevant legislation. In the United States, Canada, Europe, and most other developed parts of the world, different types of noise are managed by agencies responsible for the source of the noise. Transportation noise is usually regulated by the relevant transportation ministry, health-related work noise is often regulated by health ministries and worker's unions, and entertainment noise such as loud music is a criminal offense in many areas. As the bodies responsible for noise pollution reduction usually view noise as an annoyance rather than a problem, and reducing that noise often hurts the industry financially, little is currently being done to reduce noise pollution in developed countries.

Reducing Noise Pollution

 Author: Gayan Virajith

Everywhere we go these days, there is NOISE. Barking dogs, loud stereos, noisy exhausts, shop adverts: noise is everywhere

Sources of noise: All modes of transport create noise pollution. Some production factories make noise; they experience noise pollution and its adverse effects. Besides transportation noise, noise can come from factory appliances, power tools and audio entertainment systems.

Measures of noise: Noise pollution is measured in decibels. When noise is at 45 decibels, no human being can sleep, and at 120 decibels the ear will be in pain and hearing begins to be damaged at 85 decibels.

Effects of Noise pollution

Human health: Noise pollution will affect our health and behavior in a number of ways including deafness causing lack of sleep, heartburn, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
Speech interference: Noise more than 50dB can be very difficult to hear and interpret and cause problems such as partial deafness.
Sleep interference: Very high levels of noise can wake people from their sleep with a jerk and keep them awake or disturb their sleep pattern. This could make them irritable and tired the next day.
Decreased work performance: Increased noise levels gives rise to a lack of concentration and accuracy at work, and reduce one’s productivity and performance.
How to avoid sources of noise pollution
Traffic: Please don’t live or work near major intersections or roads, shopping centers and sporting facilities. Valleys and falls are noisier than flat roads.
Barking dogs: As a dog owner, you should make sure that your dog doesn’t annoy the neighbors with its barking and yowling.
Aircraft: Before buying a home, see how far it is from the local airport.
Neighbors: Be a good neighbor by not annoying those who live next door with your music or lawn mowing.
Solving noise problems: Many noise problems can be prevented by considering others and talking to overcome problems. Be a good and concerned neighbor by discussing a common problem calmly and in a collaborative spirit to find a common solution.