Noise Isn't Just Annoying -- It's Bad for Your Health

Noise Isn't Just Annoying -- It's Bad for Your Health

Noise pollution has as much to do with persistent low frequency sounds and vibrations – such as those emitted by wind turbines, ventilation systems, or electronic devices – as loud and jarring sounds.

 Across the world – as our numbers swell, as nations get more urbanized, and societies become more technology-dependent – we humans are getting noisier. “Among environmental factors in Europe, environmental noise leads to a disease burden that is second in magnitude only to that from air pollution,” says a 2011 World Health Organization report. In the United States, noise is now the number one neighborhood complaint, beating out crime and traffic, according to the American Housing Survey conducted by the US Census.

There have been incidents of noise conflicts leading to violence and even murder. So loud and persistent are the sounds we create as we go about the business of living that researchers say there is scarcely any place left on land or water that is free of man-made noise. We have changed what our planet sounds like. Yet there seems to be little understanding of just how seriously noise is threatening our natural world – and us. “It’s like this unrecognized growing tsunami of potential impacts; we are growing louder and louder and no one is noticing,” says Dr. Mike Webster, director of Cornell University’s Macaulay Library, the world’s oldest archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings.

There are reams of research showing that noise – commonly defined as unwanted or unpleasant sound – is not merely an annoyance. Like other forms of pollution, it has wide-ranging adverse health, social, and environmental effects. In humans, noise pollution damages hearing, disturbs communication, disrupts sleep, affects heart function, intrudes on cognition in children, reduces productivity, provokes unwanted behaviors, and increases accidents. “To say noise simply annoys people is to underestimate the effect it has on our mental and physical well-being,” says Manhattan-based psychologist and noise expert Dr. Arline Bronzaft, whose 1970s research on the effects of noise on children’s learning is considered a landmark in the field.

Bronzaft points out that noise pollution has as much to do with persistent low frequency sounds and vibrations – such as those emitted by wind turbines, ventilation systems, or electronic devices – as loud and jarring sounds. The effect of manmade noise is far more profound on the fragile and complex sound systems of the natural world. Oceans, forests, grasslands, and deserts all have their own internal harmonies. Their unique soundscapes carry important messages for marine and terrestrial animals.

When humans interrupt those harmonies, birds and animals can suffer. “In a natural environment, animal voices are created in such a way that each group of critters can hear each other,” says musician and naturalist Bernie Krause, who has spent four decades recording sounds of the biological world, which he calls “biophony.” Krause found that animals divide up the acoustic spectrum so that “birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals all find their own niches, their own bandwidths to vocalize in” so that when they issue mating calls or cry out warnings, their voices aren’t masked by the sounds being made by other animals. Human noise, which Krause calls “anthrophony,” disrupts this natural symphony. “The critters have to find new bandwidths they can vocalize in,” he says, “and when they do that it becomes very chaotic and has a great impact on them and causes great stress.”