What's New? 

Silence is golden

Chronic noise affects health, productivity and interpersonal relationships. Getting away from the racket is important for good health, says ARUNA CHANDARAJU.

No Noise Please.

WHEN the Sharmas' six-year-old son Vineet began to get increasingly irritable, prone to throwing tantrums and even perform poorly in his studies, they attributed it to a lot of things. Adjustment problems at his new school, the bad company of the boy next door, or lack of parental attention because both had busy corporate jobs. Anything but the real problem: a chronic-noise environment.

The Sharmas had been living near a big airport for five years now. Following their paediatrician Dr. S. Raghunath Rai's revelation of the root cause of the problem, the Sharmas relocated to a quieter neighbourhood.

Chronic noise

While the levels and dangers of noise pollution are well-documented and everyone knows what an irritant and stressor noise is, what is lesser known is that chronic noise can also cause mental distress, ulcers, migraines, acidity, non-cooperative behaviour, aggression, learning impairment, and even contribute to musculo-skeletal and heart problems.

Tinnitus or a ringing sound within the ears (even when there is no noise in the surroundings) is another consequence.

In fact, experts point to how Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) is gradually becoming an urban phenomenon. Given the growing number of sources of noise and constant exposure to it, people are at the risk of becoming deaf from all that noise.

Typical offenders are machinery, generator sounds, power tools, vehicles with modified silencers and recreational noise. Which means musicians and DJs in noise-high pubs and clubs or those who frequently perform at high-volume musical nites are prone to NIHL due to continuous exposure. Even audiences at these places are vulnerable.

Even at home, the neighbourhood mela or religious function, blaring film songs from loudspeakers or firecrackers at Diwali harm you.

Effects on health

As Mumbai-based ENT specialist Rajesh Rathod points out: "Eight hours of exposure to 85-dB noise on a daily basis can begin to damage your ears over a period of time."

Other alarming examples: Listening to stereo headsets (at 110 dB), attending a rock concert (at l20 dB, using power tools (at 100 dB), or hearing a gunshot (at 140 to 170 dB) may damage the hearing of some people instantly or after a few exposures.

In fact, a sudden noise exposure can cause a temporary threshold shift or a temporary hearing loss, from which one can recover only after two to three weeks' time.

Permanent hearing loss may also occur from a sudden blast of sound. The pity is that loud, unwanted noise is everywhere.

Especially in metros, where we encounter high levels of noise in traffic, in homes (from our TVs, music systems), malls, markets, restaurants, offices, etc.

Areas around airports and railway stations or noisy factories/manufacturing units are the most vulnerable. All with alarming consequences.

Especially when the noise is louder and over a longer duration.

Increasing stress

"Prolonged exposure to loud noise causes a distortion of the brain biochemistry, disturbances in the endocronological systems and increased pressure on the autonomic nervous system leading to irritability, anger and sadness, insomnia, depression, besides increased heart rate and hypertension," says Dr C.R. Chandrashekar, Head, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences, Bangalore. He adds that prolonged noise increases fatiguability — the tendency to get tired easily.

Children, he points out, can show adjustment problems at home and school. "They tend to get angry easily, throw tantrums, and are less focussed in their studies and at home, tend to overreact to situations."

As for adults, it leads to stress, or increases existing stress-levels the person is under. With the result, he/she tends to lose his temper more easily, show signs of frustration. This even strains interpersonal relationships.

Delhi-based civil engineer Deepak Somnath explains that, typically, his one-hour drive to and from his office, takes him through high-traffic areas and past noisy and highly crowded markets.

"The blaring horns, the sounds of two-wheelers and three-wheelers as they rev up, and also those hawkers shouting at the top of their voices: I feel more stressed by just these two hours than my eight-hour workday at the office."

He is even increasingly irritable and liable to snap at family members as soon as he reaches home. This was not the case when he worked in small town Indore two years ago explains his wife. And Deepak ruefully agrees.

And 67-year-old Sujatha Shanmughan in Chennai suffers from tinnitus after living eight years next to a factory, which cared little to control the very high noise levels it generated. Confined to bed with a severe illness she had no means of getting away.

She often wonders about the effects on the health of the workers who, being inside the factory, must have been exposed to higher decible levels.

In fact, workplace-environment noise forms a major area of concern in the work of occupational-safety experts: professionals who study how workplaces can be hazardous in various ways. Significantly, even continuous low-level noise can be an insidious stressor.

A study by psychologist and international expert on environmental stress, Gary Evans of Cornell University, revealed that children living in noisier neighbourhoods experienced higher overnight levels of the stress-hormone cortisol, marginally higher blood pressure, and greater heart reactivity in stress tests. Academic performance is also affected.

Other studies show that compared to children from noisier neighbourhoods, children living near airports/railway stations or busy highways tend to have lower reading skills and develop language skills more slowly.

You are not immune even at the workplace. Even safe offices (as opposed to noisy factories or manufacturing units, mentioned above) and white-collar workers are vulnerable.

In another study by Evans, two groups of employees were studied. One worked in a typical open-area office space where people are exposed to `typical 'office noise: employee chatter; typing sounds and noise from fax machines, printers, shredding machines, and ringing desk phones and mobiles. The other group worked in a quiet office with self-contained workspaces.

The first group had high levels of adrenalin (a hormone released by the body under stress) while the second had comparatively low levels. Significantly, they were also much more relaxed and less stressed at the end of their workday.

Noise also hampered performance and productivity. When a puzzle demanding concentration and attention was given to both groups, employees from the `noisy' office-surroundings were discovered to be less diligent and attentive. They even tended to get frustrated and give up more easily than the quiet-office group.

The effect even spills over to the home, researchers discovered. Those from the noisy office were observed to suffer sleep problems, had digestion problems, and displayed irritability, unlike the other group.