Noisy Days, Noisy Nights

Excerpt

Noise as an ambient pollutant was for a long time neglected, at least when set beside air or water pollution. Several reasons for this neglect come to mind. The only definition of noise that we have is “unwanted sound,” but that is highly subjective; to some, a full-blooded performance of Shostakovich’s 10th symphony is a pleasure, to others cacophony. Also, sound is hard to measure. The bel was not adopted as a base unit by the Système International, and one scholarly explanation of the complexities of the widely used decibel illustrates the difficulties.1The human impact of unwanted sound shades from mere annoyance to disturbed sleep, stress, hearing damage, hypertension, and even ischemic heart disease, but the strength of the evidence varies, as do the settings, which range from exposure at the workplace, living close to busy roads, or being close to an airport, to just having noisy neighbors. Noise is not exclusively an urban problem, but high population density and heavily used transport systems do not make for a quiet life in cities, and much of today’s reawakened interest in “noise and health” (a quarterly journal of that name began life in 1998) relates to the results of urban studies of noise from road vehicles and aircraft. …