I liked reading this article, and also thought that it was a great way to lead noise pollution into scientific facts from the previous article. I’ve never really thought about the various aspects in which noise pollution affects our health, more specifically how it impacts us both physically and mentally. I think that even though we can’t always control how much sound is emitted on the streets, etc. we can control isolated areas. For example, I take the Staten Island Ferry every morning, and there are certain areas on the ferry that are labeled as “Voluntary Quiet Zones”. As the article mentions, noises can contribute to agitation and annoyance (as per section 7), and the ferry attempts to mitigate that by those quiet zones. This is a great idea, I think, because in the mornings and evenings, people are tired and would like some quiet instead of having to share space with someone blasting music, for example. Actually, this morning I was sitting in one of the quiet spaces, and some guy was playing music on his phone without headphones, and the captain and police came and tried to kick him out (which didn’t work, he just stopped playing the music), but Staten Islanders take their silence and quiet zones seriously.
Continuing from what I wrote about in the last post, I think that there will always be a trade off between where we live and the noise levels associated. Since society is becoming more urbanized, attaining quiet will be more and more difficult. However, I think this should provide an incentive for people to get out into nature more. That makes sense, right? As long as people are aware of the negative effects of noise pollution they would be more willing, or at least be somehow encouraged to get out into nature more. But this also goes back to the entire aspect of not having enough time to do these things because many people are aware of air pollution, yet no one makes the effort of getting out of the city to get some fresh air.
