One of the best things about waking up early is the lack of activity around you. The world is yours. Lie in bed and just listen to the silence; it’s so relaxing! Nothing but an occasional gust of wind caressing the trees outside, a lone bird calling to his friends, or the gentle sound of rain on the patio.
This is the best way to start the day, adding one small sound at a time — well, until the street sweeper comes at 6:00. Until the traffic starts up at 6:30. Until the garbage truck shows up at 7. By then, the magic of the early morning is lost, and you might as well get up.
Noise signals danger, making our brains produce stress hormones
In the natural world, loudness signals danger. It puts us on alert. Our brains produce stress hormones and adrenaline. Our defenses go up.
In the modern world, noise is a leading cause of stress, and stress is a leading contributor to health problems. It even shortens our lifespans.
For maybe 150 years, we’ve chosen to ignore this as the price of living in an industrialized society. Sure, a lot has been done to protect people from the loudest of sounds — workers using jackhammers, people living next to railway lines and so on — but our everyday environment is still full of noise.
Try to carry on a conversation next to a busy street and you’ll see just how loud ordinary cars are. A police or ambulance siren is as loud as the loudspeaker at a rock concert.
Car alarms, thankfully, seem to have disappeared. Leaf-blowers, however, haven’t, nor have church bells. In my neighborhood, they ring at 10 o’clock at night. Imagine if everyone else were allowed to advertise their product or service at that volume! (Actually, they do, in TV commercials that are much louder than the programs they interrupt.)
The source of noise — and stress — that alarms me the most, however, is other people. In the last 10 years, it’s somehow become acceptable, or tolerable, for people to be loud and inconsiderate.
Mobile phones made this possible.
In an office environment, some co-workers might be surprised at how much everyone else knows about their personal lives — because they’ve expressed their “secrets” (or just the fact that they’re not working hard) loudly. Unfortunately, the loudest people can also be the most boring, so there’s usually little need to listen to what they’re saying.
Then there are the teenagers on the bus — 16 or 17 years old — who consider shouting at the person next to them to be a normal conversation.
Noise has a cumulative effect. People are losing their hearing
This is truly frightening. Noise is like radiation: its effects on the body are cumulative. A lot of loud people are in denial that they’re losing their hearing. The Center for Hearing and Communication (CHC) in the United States says that 12 percent of Americans have a significant hearing loss. The Deutscher Schwerhörigenbund says 20 percent of the German population has a hearing problem.
It’s time to fight back. The CHC has declared April 30, 2014 to be International Noise Awareness Day. In German-speaking countries, this is called Tag gegen Lärm, and it is observed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik, the Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft in Austria and the Vereinigung kantonaler Lärmschutzfachleute in Switzerland. The aim of this day is to spread information about the prevention and treatment of hearing loss.
Where to start? Any good ear, nose and throat specialist can do a hearing test — often for free — and can offer some help to those whose hearing is starting to go.
Lots of preventative measures can help as well. Lower the volume on the radio and TV. Complain about the early-morning street sweepers. Replace your old household appliances with newer, quieter ones. Cover your ears when an ambulance goes past. On airplanes, use noise-cancelling headphones that cover the whole ear. Tell your hard-of-hearing relatives to wear their hearing aids, and tell your noisy co-workers to keep it down. If someone tells you you’re loud, thank him and get to a doctor.
Spread the word, and enjoy the peace and quiet.
