This journal article was a very good-follow up to the New Yorker article that graphed and plotted the noise complaints in all neighborhoods in the city; in other words, it was nice to combine the statistics with the hard, scientific facts about the damage that noise pollution can do to us. It even discussed noise in cities just a few centuries ago and empires that existed a few millennia in the past, so it is not as if noise is a new issue. However, with our increasing population and urbanization, it is important to note that deafening sound will become more frequent and unpleasant unless we do something about it now. In fact, cities have become synonymous with noise havens and the suburbs and countryside have been signified by peaceful, tranquil abodes. To be honest, cities will always be louder than these areas because of the sheer density of people and buildings, but the decibel levels that they reach are just obscene, and nobody should have to be subjected to them.
The “Adverse Health Effects of Noise” section was extremely detailed and perfectly outlined how humans are harmed by noise; as I mentioned in my last response, many animals have more sensitive ears than we do, so these effects are multiplied significantly for them. Other than the obvious effects of hearing impairment and sleep disturbances, and other physiological effects such as endocrine and circulatory system issues, noise pollution causes many psychological problems as well, impacting a person’s ability to speak, think sanely, perform simple tasks, and even interact with others. At first, I thought that these were too indirectly related to and thus extrapolated too far from noise pollution, but after a second glance, they are perfectly reasonable; a person’s health is holistic and made up of many components that must work together in unison, and so if one sense (such as hearing, in this case) is affected, everything else must be as well.
The authors conclude that “part of the solution may require federal or state legislation aimed at supporting local efforts or the restoration of federal funding for the Office of Noise Abatement and Control” (Goines and Hagler 293). However, the government can only pass so many laws to combat noise; personally, I have noticed buses and cars continue to blare their horns even though there is a $350 fine for doing so, and this probably means that enforcement of the pre-existing laws is just too lax. Excessive pessimism does not help either. As discussed in many of our other classes, education is the most powerful force, since people will develop personal connections to their environment, and they will then receive incentives to save it not just for them, but for their descendants and the rest of the ecosystems that they belong to.
