Noise pollution hurts the heart

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/how-noise-harms-heart/618091/

by lxm • 5 years ago

246 273 5 years ago

belly_joe• 5 years ago

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled.

Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

Guest42• 5 years ago

Agreed. I also don’t like it when locking a car via remote causes the horn to go off and in order to make sure people hit it multiple times.

stevenpetryk• 5 years ago

There's someone who does this every day outside my apartment at around 7:15. It is infuriating. 4-5 loud, inconsistently-spaced honks "just to be sure" when I'm sure their car locks silently on the first request. Most modern cars only beep if you lock them twice.

RootReducer3• 5 years ago

A neighbor used to come home from work late at night and lock their doors three or four times, and every time it would wake me up. I wish there was a silent door lock and it would just flash the headlights.

Karawebnetwork3• 5 years ago

New cars are starting to replace this with a less intense "beep beep". I was agreeably surprised when I locked my 2020 car and it didn't honk at me.

Arrath• 5 years ago

I turn off the audible alert on lock. Flashing the lights is plenty, why be obnoxious and add noise to the soundscape? I can hear the locks click, anyway.

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

Is that limited to the US? In Europe I don't see cars do that; usually the lights blink but it doesn't make large sound.

airstrike2• 5 years ago

I have this wild pet idea that we should be have a meter connected to a car's horn and at the end of the year you have to pay a bill for the amount you used. Something like $0.10 / second. You'll still honk when you need to but think twice before using it to annoy other drivers.

flycaliguy• 5 years ago

I like your thinking but the dystopian reality would be a wealthy elite class of honkers giving us all heart attacks.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

Spanish drivers surely go bankrupt after a week :) It's common here to toot the horn to greet a friend. And since everyone knows everyone, everyone toots all the time.

learnstats23• 5 years ago

Something like $0.10 / second

This is a low enough cost that I bet people would use and hold their horn for longer, to show their annoyance in $.

r00fus• 5 years ago

The unintended consequences of this are clearly bad, but is there a less invasive approach? Are horns actually a required security item? If so, how can we prevent overuse?

johnchristopher2• 5 years ago

I have stopped explaining people how my neighbor's friends honking when coming in and leaving drives me up the wall. There's the sound and then there's the rage from "that was fucking useless to do, you just spent 15 minutes saying goodbye on the doorstep, it 11PM, please be quiet" but I am the grumpy one. So I say nothing anymore.

Fun thing is, when I am in the city, I like opening the windows in summer and car noises don't bother me much because it's normal and part of the scenery.

But then I am perfectly capable of putting on my pajamas past 10PM, climb down the stairs from the flat to the street, knock on the car's window and ask the driver to turn off the engine because the low humming noise I hear in my bed is driving me insane. It's when the sound is useless and could be easily prevented that I get crazy. Misophonia very much also.

dazc3• 5 years ago

Maybe it's the lack of consideration that annoys you more than the noise itself?

firstfewshells• 5 years ago

Well, I hope you never have to travel to India where people honk when the red light is on. Why? Coz they're bored and they "want" the light to turn green.

fwn• 5 years ago

For the sake of the people living in India we probably all hope that such norms fade over time.

I've read about an experiment where increasing the noise level of carhorns on the inside of the car reduced horn usage significantly. Maybe there's some smart way to use tweaks like that in future regulation.

frankish• 5 years ago

I strongly empathize. I usually wait a few seconds, then just flash my high beams for most situations.

Karawebnetwork3• 5 years ago

I wonder if ear plugs help at all. My partner snores so I wear them at night.

Even then, sometimes I get woken up by the low frequencies of large trucks idling (snow removal operations, mostly). The vibrations are not even felt in my ears but through my entire body.

jeanofthedead• 5 years ago

When earplugs fail (as in the case of neighbor's bass, partner's snoring, or rambunctious nocturnal pets), I highly recommend the Bose SleepBuds II. Best purchase of the year for me, and my sleep tracking apps have proven to me that these things work. Might be worth looking into.

RootReducer3• 5 years ago

This is my issue too. Earplugs don't help for idling trucks, or subwoofers. Nothing I've found does.

vladvasiliu4• 5 years ago

This was interesting for me, too. At the end of 2017 I moved into a new apartment, with a great view on a very busy road. I immediately felt much more "off". Maybe stressed in a way, but since I'm not usually the stressed kind, I had a hard time identifying the feeling.

At around the same time, the AC in the office developed a constant hum. This drove me nuts.

When I went to my parents' house in the suburbs, I could hear the silence and really, really enjoy it. I realized that basically, during a regular day, I could never get to spend a moment in silence. There would always be some kind of noise: traffic outside my apartment window, metro / bus / traffic during the commute, random people talking / AC hum at the office.

This made me wonder whether all the people that I see around me being constantly angry and "on the edge" might be that way in part because they basically never catch a break. They are constantly under this continuous noise. And I don't think we can really get used to it. I remember a friend said that I'd get used to the noise when I would complain. It's more than 3 years later, and it still annoys to me no end. I may sometimes forget the noise is there, but I think it still has its effect on my stress level. It's not like getting used to lifting weights or something to which the body adapts.

x3iv130f• 5 years ago

It was a culture shock for me as a Californian to visit Tokyo. In my mind cities are dirty, loud, and dangerous.

Tokyo despite being one of the densest and busiest cities in first world countries is incredibly clean, quiet, and safe.

neves• 5 years ago

Ear plugs are and one of the greatest inventions of humanity :-)

No joking: I use to work, sleep, public transport, and every time I want some piece of mind.

kiliantics4• 5 years ago

I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car

I feel the same way but with the sentence stopping here

croddin• 5 years ago

Electric cars are starting to get cheaper than ICE cars and that should contribute to making cities quieter in general.

pharmakom• 5 years ago

A simple solution would be to require car companies to make the horn as loud inside the vehicle as it is outside.

However, general motor traffic noise - tyres, engines, displaced air - is loud enough to be a serious problem anyway.

I don't know how we solve this. Car dependency is so ingrained in our collective consciousness; is it politically feasible to find a way out?

avidiax2• 5 years ago

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-noise-camera-trial-to...

Noise cameras. Just like a speed camera, but it measures noise levels and issues a ticket in the mail. There's unfortunately a regressive element (some people can't afford to fix their noisy exhaust), but I see no reason not to issue tickets for noise outside of normal hours, e.g. 7am-10pm.

defterGoose3• 5 years ago

That's all well and good, but the horn is, at its core, a safety device. What we really need is for law enforcement to start actually enforcing the laws we have on the books against things like loud stereos and mufflers. These are far more disruptive, especially at night when most people are trying to sleep. I'd even go so far as to posit that the link discussed between noise and heart health is actually via psychological stress, rather than physiological stress.

eyelidlessness• 5 years ago

This seems very location specific. Where I grew up (DC suburbs) sound systems and loud engine noise were common and I’d agree with you that was the problem.

Where I live now (Seattle) neither are common but traffic congestion and impatient drivers are. Horns aren’t used for safety, they’re used to communicate crowded aggressive driving.

I agree with GP that for this scenario restricting cars overall is a better solution. The laws on the books certainly apply but they’re only enforceable in a meaningful way if you have traffic cops on every arterial. And that’s not something I think anyone wants.

I'd even go so far as to posit that the link discussed between noise and heart health is actually via psychological stress, rather than physiological stress.

Why is this even a distinction? The psychological stress leads to the physiological stress impact on heart health.

baron816• 5 years ago

There are few things that make me angrier than when a Harley-Davidson style motorcycle (or a pack of them) drive past me while I’m walking down the street. I can’t believe cities haven’t prohibited them, especially at night. Those things are specifically designed to create noise pollution. They’re so fucking obnoxious, even just thinking about it while I’m writing this is working me up.

ReactiveJelly• 5 years ago

Yes, it's frustrating that some people just don't believe in the human right to peace and quiet.

That's one reason why I have no hope for self-organizing models of society. There are griefers who only respond to force, and it doesn't take many of them to fuck up the whole game.

boredumb6• 5 years ago

You believe we need a more authoritarian society because some people live lives that are louder than you deem appropriate and enough so that you are willing to 'respond with force' and you somehow see them as the people who are "fucking up the whole game"?

tayo42• 5 years ago

Lately I've come to the conclusion that peace and quiet really is a luxury to have. Most people I don't think get to experience it. You need to have money to have it so you can live somewhere nice. Other wise your stuck living in apartment buildings, crowded cities, next to noisy neighbors. Go to busy shared spaces (ppl stop playing radios out doors!) or staying in shitty hotels.

cowmoo728• 5 years ago

Just remember the cure can be worse than the disease. I agree with you - mostly because of people who "roll coal" to poison cyclists for fun - but I'm wary of involving authority and force. Somehow there are societies that don't have as much of a problem with things like this, so maybe we should learn from them.

LinuxBender2• 5 years ago

Many most? cities do have noise ordinance laws that would prohibit choppers, but then cops have to decide if that want to take on that battle. Most bikers are super friendly. Some of them are not. One of the biker gangs in my area use a cocktail of drugs that make them fearless, angry, violent and it usually takes half a dozen cops to take down one of the bikers.

saiya-jin• 5 years ago

sounds like exactly the kind of work cops should be doing

mc32• 5 years ago

It’s not only choppers that are loud.

High RPM street bikes which get “gunned” by their riders are also very loud and more frequent than passé choppers.

dheera• 5 years ago

The one thing that makes me even angrier is gas-powered leaf blowers that make multiple passes past my apartment, and seemingly deliberately linger for longer if I'm in the middle of a conference call.

Seriously, go electric and ban those abominations.

RootReducer3• 5 years ago

I would be ecstatic if my city banned leaf blowers.

pilsetnieks• 5 years ago

They are also hugely polluting, more than cars and trucks: https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-ear-splitting-leaf-blower-...

boredumb6• 5 years ago

Harleys stock are actually under the legal noise limit (80 decibels i think?) and are generally that loud due to straight exhaust and a specific cam shaft they use to squeeze more performance out of them. My understanding is folks prefer them to be loud so that they can be better noticed by cars and get hit less often.

Dirt bikes are around 100 decibels, perform like trash and shouldn't be on the freeway near cars in the first place.

Here in Puerto Rico we have herds (20-200) of two stroke bikes that ride together at night for fun. I would gladly trade them for 1000 Harley-Davidsons.

pivo2• 5 years ago

folks prefer them to be loud so that they can be better noticed by cars and get hit less often

If you want to do something that’s too dangerous to do without infuriating everyone around you, maybe you just shouldn’t do it.

I don’t think those super loud exhausts are stock either. There are tons of bikers who replace the stock pipes with the loudest ones they can find. I don’t get it at all.

nickt4• 5 years ago

That “loud pipes save lives is rubbish” [1]. Even if it were true the ROI on some training and awareness would be far higher.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Do-loud-pipes-really-significantly-sav...

josefresco2• 5 years ago

"My understanding is folks prefer them to be loud so that they can be better noticed by cars and get hit less often."

As a member of a motorcycle riding family in the US (I don't ride, but several close family members do) this is hilariously wrong. They like it loud because they like the sound, and they like to get noticed. I say hilariously because I constantly joke with my family members about how silly the bike culture is, and to give full credit to them; they agree.

mikestew2• 5 years ago

If “loud pipes save(d) lives”, your insurance company would give a discount for straight pipes. Instead they give a discount if you’ve taken a training course and have ABS. It is bullshit spouted by man-children that just want to attract attention, dishonestly disguised as a safety issue.

cheschire• 5 years ago

While they are under the legal noise limit, the low frequency of harleys travels significantly easier through obstacles, making them seem louder inside a house or around a wall / fence / bush than a higher frequency noise at the same dB.

I'm definitely not arguing that 2-stroke is quieter though. Just that it's not quite an apples to apples comparison due to both variables having an impact.

bengale• 5 years ago

A guy that lived on the street down from mine used to ride his about at night, made my house shake. Was so happy when he seemed to move away.

arnvald• 5 years ago

For around a year I lived next to a highway, which was one of the worst rental decisions I've made in my life.

There was a constant stream of noise, but with the cars it wasn't a big problem, because it was the same volume all the time, so I quickly got used to it. Motorcycles though were a huge issue! Every 10-15 minutes there was some motorcycle passing that just distracted me from whatever I was doing. I left that apartment as soon as I could.

the_only_law2• 5 years ago

There’s some asshole in my apartment complex who decided a car with an engine with a startup sound very similar loudness to a passing motorcycle. I just love walking outside to be greeted by that.

amelius• 5 years ago

And the people riding them use earplugs :)

https://www.alpinehearingprotection.com/earplugs/motosafe-pr...

nimbius• 5 years ago

Not for the pipes though. Most riders wear ear plugs for wind noise and traffic noise at highway speed.

nickysielicki• 5 years ago

I get where you're coming from, but I also believe that loud pipes save lives. Ultimately, is it really that big of a deal?

dangwu• 5 years ago

Is riding motorcycles really that important if it causes noise pollution and enrages people?

wl• 5 years ago

Inflicting hearing loss on the unconsenting public is a huge deal.

bdamm3• 5 years ago

Denying others sleep is kind of a big deal.

sneak• 5 years ago

Loud sounds are annoying to be sure, but this sounds also like a bit of an emotional regulation issue in addition, especially if just writing a comment about the event is enraging you.

Stressing about that kind of stuff that you ultimately have little/no control over is an express train to an unhappy life.

TheSpiceIsLife• 5 years ago

There might be some truth to this, though I don't know whether we have conscious control of it.

There's some evidence to suggest magnesium deficiency can lead to an increase in startle response.

tawayyyy• 5 years ago

you have no idea. i can even sympathize with a murderer. you know, self-defense, impulse... can be anything. but this? this is premediated. just one asshat can ruin entire town. these people deserve lifetime-imprisonment after multiple offence.

metalliqaz• 5 years ago

if the typical biker was a 24 year old hispanic man, they would be outlawed before you could say "ay caramba". Instead, boomers and genx white guys get a pass.

dgrcode5• 5 years ago

I think this is just not a concern for the general population. There are solutions available if we wanted to address this issue.

There could be a restriction on the vehicle. Some European cities have zones with restricted access to vehicles based on their CO2 emissions. There are stickers that you have to put on your windshield to drive into those areas.

We could have some "noise emission" regulations that ban some vehicles from driving at certain times, like before 9am or after 7pm.

It would be similar to the CO2 emission regulations, there's no need to measure the emissions because you have a sticker that already say what your emission levels are.

vmception• 5 years ago

Hard to enforce those in the US

We could make re-registering more difficult or impossible for people with addresses in areas with those kind of ordinances

Enthusiasts will have nominal addresses but it can be a deterrent

CountDrewku2• 5 years ago

They just sound like someone ripping ass to me. Never understood the obsessions with their awful noise. It's not a good exhaust tone at all.

Dumblydorr• 5 years ago

The main problem seems to be stress; with loud noises comes stress, which is a chronic killer. There's also the correlation between loud noise and air pollution, loud noise and sleep disruption, vibrations, disruptions to daily habits, inconvenience of construction and transit, etc.

Personal story, there were workers using an extremely loud diesel powered crane to redo the facade of our building. They without fail began work at 705, outside of a building of 100 mostly young people, dozens of whom were still in bed. Why do construction crews schedules, 3 people, get precedence over the dozens of residents? My personal stress and anger was peaked every time that crane turned on, I wanted to shout at the workers by the end.

The coup de grace was the turning on of the crane at 630 on Saturday morning, someone had bribed them to lift their own personal AC unit on top of the building. Bathrobed me went out and told them a few words. They responded they wanted to get it done early so it wouldn't bother people. WTF!

centimeter2• 5 years ago

I think it’s unfortunate that society has become pacified to a point that people generally will not use e.g. minor equipment sabotage to deal with nuisances like this that otherwise take excessive bureaucratic nonsense to combat.

the_only_law2• 5 years ago

With cameras everywhere and such a litigious society? The stress is probably less impactful in the short run compared to after they get fucked over by a lawsuit and/or criminal charge.

74d-fe6-2c63• 5 years ago

you have to fight an asshole like an asshole - few people are able to pull this off. most people prefer to suffer and pretend to themselves to be "tolerant" instead of just standing up for themselves.

angst_ridden• 5 years ago

There's construction going on here, and has been for the past few months. That 7am powerup of the jackhammers definitely triggers a primitive, visceral reaction.

nickt4• 5 years ago

I live near a highway in Colorado which is very quiet except for summer weekends when the noisy motorbikes turn up and it becomes borderline intolerable (I’m not against motorbikes, I ride, I just hate the lack of consideration for others piece and quiet).

On a thread about air pollution a few days ago [1] I mentioned sensor.community [2]. They are promoting crowdsourced environmental data, including noise and I’m currently building their DNMS so I can contribute [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915103 [2] https://sensor.community/en/ [3] https://sensor.community/en/sensors/dnms/

neolog7• 5 years ago

Some unicode issues on that site "â ï¸"

bsd442• 5 years ago

I used to live in a flat with a window onto the main road and I would violently wake up 4-6x every night and my heart rate would be through the roof. It's not easy to go back to sleep after that. I can get used to consistent noise and filter it out, but I can never get used to an extremely loud noise coming rapidly out of dead silence. Those were mostly custom exhausts, motorcycles and sirens.

If I really needed sleep I would get myself drunk for a week straight, that was the only time I slept through the night. But the chronic lack of sleep and sleep disturbance made me generally angry and quick to explode at every little thing. I was really miserable for years. Luckily I saved enough money to move to a quiet cul de sac.

I honestly can't wait for electric cars to come en mass, even if it costs the environment the same or more than ICE, because you can't complain about noise pollution in a way that someone would take you seriously. Everyone just waves their hand "it's just a loud car passing by", but they don't see the negative consequences that has for both mental and physical health.

zemvpferreira3• 5 years ago

I'm sorry you went through that awful situation but... was there anything stopping you from wearing earplugs?

I religiously wear the best earplugs and face mask I can find to sleep. Even in controlled environments, they make a hell of a difference.

learnstats23• 5 years ago

When I lived on a similar main road, I ended up with some form of noise turned up as loud as possible (to attempt to mute sirens), and I wore ear plugs to minimise that, and I still occasionally got woken up by the vibration of a large or loud vehicle passing by.

bitcurious• 5 years ago

What are the best earplugs in your opinion?

aleclarsoniv• 5 years ago

How would you hear your fire alarm?

bsd442• 5 years ago

I considered using earplugs, but I researched it online and I learned that using them regularly can cause health problems related to your ears. They are meant to be used on occasion not for a prolonged periods of time, so I abandoned the idea.

I also tried white noise generators, but those were only effective against neighbours and not outside traffic. In the end, knocking myself out with a bottle of wine was the only thing that worked. That's not something I would do regularly, but once every few months when the lack of sleep would start to affect me badly in every possible way.

After I moved to a quiet place, my life improved tenfold in a space of few weeks. The only thing that stayed with me is an elevated sensitivity to noise (a kind of trauma but instead of being afraid I get mad at the noise origin).

ryanianian5• 5 years ago

Damaging the heart sounds right.

My neighbor has a unique obsession with his leaf-blower. It's like his daily 30-120 minutes of exercise at random times of the day. Even with all the noise-cancelling technology in the world, it ruins me for at least 2-3 hours and makes both video-conferencing and deep work basically impossible.

Here's the thing: Nobody cares. The neighbor can say no to polite requests to figure out a compromise, and your local officials will tell you that you have the right to make as much noise as you want, and nobody else can do anything about it.

Noise ordinances restrict decibels, not the tones or revving patterns or high-pitch "safety" beeping or other things that cut right through the heart despite them not technically being over a decibel level for a sustained period of time.

With more people doing deeper work from home, I hope there are some pioneering cities that can establish protocols that protect work environments and locals' sanity - while still allowing noisy work to get done at predictable times of the day and with reasonable limits on meaningful impact to those living within earshot.

Like TFA, we have to paint noise more like the health problem it actually is.

centimeter2• 5 years ago

high-pitch "safety" beeping

This drives me insane. I know some shithead lawyer or safety “activist” somewhere is responsible for all the bullshit beeping I have to deal with in my life. A fire alarm going off for no reason. (I would accept the negligible marginal risk of burning to death than have to deal with legally mandated fire alarms.) My car beeping because I didn’t put the seatbelt over the luggage in the passenger seat. Even airplanes aren’t as annoying with the audible alerts as cars. The only time I get beeped at when I’m flying is if I’m stalling or something. At least in aircraft, designers have the understanding and latitude to treat noises as the pointless distractions they are.

dgrcode5• 5 years ago

I lived in Dublin, Ireland, for a while and every. Single. Day. There was a fire alarm going off. It drove me insane. I had already forgotten how crazy that was and your message made me remember it. Now I can appreciate more not having that where I currently live :)

jodrellblank3• 5 years ago

"I was in a school science lesson learning about Pavlov and thinking 'stupid dogs'. Then the bell rang and we all had lunch." - Gary Delaney.

"I know some shithead lawyer or safety “activist” somewhere is responsible for all the bullshit beeping I have to deal with in my life."

Probably not; whoever set the Unix/Linux CLI to ding aggressively whenever you do literally anything is guilty of something or other. It's not just the nature of the beep sound, 8-bit music can be fun, it's combined with the nature of "safety" beeping being an audio wrap-on-the-knuckles for doing something "wrong" like ... pressing backspace when there's nothing to backspace DING! or turning on the induction hob DING! or turning up the power on the induction hob DING! or not hurrying quickly enough to the finished microwave DING DING! or reversing a large vehicle BEEEEEEP! or not plugging in your seatbelt NAUGHTY! (Not being awake for capitalism productivity time RING RING!)

They're not just audio noises, they're psychological soup nazis. Cracking twigs and sudden barks are sounds that somehting is coming to eat you, screeching is a sound that your infant might be about to die, none of it is relevant to trying to adjust a volume control one percent higher than it can go. DING!

I've run Windows with all sounds off, and Linuxes with muted error bels for so long that I can't imagine what it would be like if the entire computing audioscape was nice, encouraging, pleasant, positive feedback like message notifications on smartphones tend to be.

josefresco2• 5 years ago

Most of my neighbors hire leaf blower toting professional landscaping crews to clear their lawns on a regular basis. The process takes maybe 10 minutes for weekly blowouts, and maybe 45-60 minutes for seasonal jobs.

I thought this was obnoxious, until one of my neighbors decided to do the work themselves. It took them an entire long weekend of (what seemed like) 9-5 blowing to clear their lot.

Lammy• 5 years ago

The first thing I do in any car is plug in my OBDLink LX, fire up Carista on my phone, and see what obnoxious beeps, honks, and flashes I can disable: https://cdn.dealereprocess.net/cdn/servicemanuals/toyota/201...

agumonkey• 5 years ago

Are these gas powered blower? I wonder if electric ones exist. If not maybe there's a better design for small homes / lawn.

dgrcode5• 5 years ago

Looking forward to those electric blowers

ryanianian5• 5 years ago

Electric blowers exist. I have one. But his property is just big enough and with enough bushes and things where a cord would probably quickly become a nuisance. Hopefully the Tesla Lawn Care line is imminent.

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

A partial solution would be soundproof houses, though that doesn't rescue one's backyard or park from loud neighbors. Every house or apartment should have at least a room or two that are impervious to outdoor noise.

At the same time, there are really good reasons to make noise sometimes, from music to machines, so better ways to do that without overly bothering others are needed too.

ryanianian5• 5 years ago

I've spent serious time looking into this. One of the biggest sources of noise is windows or other places air can start to get in. I re-sealed my windows as best I could, but it's still a crisis of sound. Windows that claim to be sound-isolating either don't open at all or are very expensive to buy or properly install.

But: These are the kinds of "nobody cares it's your fault it bugs you and you need to find a solution" comments that are pervasive. Sure, I need to do my part as someone who's bothered by the sound, but there is no real incentive for the producer of the noise to cut it out.

Not singling you out in particular, just showing that even honest proposals for solutions tend to miss the elephant in the room: noise pollution that isn't pure sustained decibels can still be damaging.

Say I have an obnoxious horn that is a few db below the ordinance/limit. Many may claim that's a nuisance although somehow the blower isn't. But why shouldn't I get to play with my horn for a few hours every day? Maybe my leaves don't like it. The fact that the leaf-blower sound comes from doing a "chore" seems to change the equation in ways that are hard to articulate.

arminiusreturns• 5 years ago

This, at least in America, is the real heart of the problem. Our building practices have leaned so cheap for so long on thin margins, that walls, even exterior, are paper thin to the point of being ridiculous.

This becomes much more obvious if you have travelled around to other countries, and it's not all about wealth. Yes, rich ones such as Switzerland are a great example because of the heat containment requirements they have, there are poorer countries that still know how to build a house without sound going through it as if it was nothing.

This doesn't mean noise pollution shouldn't be tackled itself, but cities are noisey, and people at least deserve to have domiciles that give them a refuge.

This means you need to start participating in your city and county governments if you really want change (like many things!)

undefined12• 5 years ago

leaf blowers are such a pox on neighborhoods.

we really need to find an alternative. is it possible to make an electric leaf blower that is both powerful and quiet?

or forget the leaf blower altogether and pay kids to rake up leaves instead. make it the new paper route. $N per bag.

mint2• 5 years ago

Yes, some cities actually ban non-electric leaf blowers. It’s possible to make them powerful and quiet or powerful and loud. It’s just a matter of cost and will. It probably doesn’t cost much more but no one has cared to do it.

reddit_clone2• 5 years ago

Indeed. Are leaf blowers that much more efficient than good old fashioned rakes?

Especially if you pay some kids to do it? They get exercise and money out of it. We get some peace and quiet.

Unklejoe• 5 years ago

I have an electric leaf blower and it's loud as hell. I think most of the noise comes from the high velocity air itself.

goldenchrome• 5 years ago

Have you talked to your neighbor? It could be as simple as a lack of awareness on their part.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

It almost never is. You are a nice person to assume the best though.

ryanianian5• 5 years ago

Repeatedly. It's a weird power dynamic that neighbors have. He's not a rude person, but he just doesn't "get it." I asked him to run his blower any time except 9-12 and 1-5, but that worked for like 2 days.

dazc3• 5 years ago

The problem with annoying neighbours is that they lack the common decency to comply. By definition, if they had the required decency then they wouldn't become annoying in the first place.

The general advice always seems to be to talk to your neighbour about the problem but, in my experience, this never works and is more likely to aggravate an already testy relationship.

Thus far, until 'being annoying' becomes an acceptable defence for murder, the only strategy that works 100% is to move.

lowercased2• 5 years ago

Similar - couple of neighbors of mine enjoy the leaf blowing and riding mowers. I mean... it's not speculation, one said "oh, i love it - it's my relaxation time". And... when he can, he'll spend 2-3 hrs putzing around riding and blowing whatever he can. We have the same size yard, and have a company which is paid by the job. They can do the whole same size in about under 30 minutes (often just with 1 person - 2 folks it's often 20 minutes).

There's little we can do when someone gets pleasure out of running a loud motor for hours at a time. He started a leaf blower, then left it running next to our window while he went inside for about 10 minutes (bathroom visit probably?). Just... insanity.

ip262• 5 years ago

Get your neighbor a powerful, quiet, electric leaf blower for Christmas? If he's leaf-blower-obsessed, he might even love you for it.

The electric ones aren't noiseless, but they are a far sight better.

macg333• 5 years ago

I live near a busy road, close to an intersection with a stoplight, and have my desk at a window that faces said road. The constant slowing a revving of traffic around the light is very distracting and I run an air purifier on high throughout the day to stabilize the noise and drown out the shifting traffic noises. I have also shifted my desk so that it does not overlook the road and thus I don't have to watch individuals sitting at the light all day. These two adjustments have made a positive impact on my focus when I'm working.

While I am excited for EVs to become more mainstream, I'm afraid for roads such as mine where the speed limit is 40 and people often drive 50+ that the quiet engine won't make much of a difference given the speed and that the sound of tires on the road and wind rushing around the vehicle are still somewhat loud in their own right. It makes me want to move to a more rural environment where the loudest noise is the refrigerator.

UweSchmidt• 5 years ago

With more EVs the local pollution is going go down a lot. Probably also something that you'd notice more you could do a quick A/B test.

74d-fe6-2c63• 5 years ago

Not sure about the long run development, though. There are people who install mp3-players attached to powerful speakers which are synchronized with the gas paddle. Those are insanely loud and sometimes sound more like perverted space ships. Meaning - for many idiots a loud car or motorcycle never was about enjoying the mechanics to begin with.

DigitallyFidget• 5 years ago

I'd like to see an actual legitimate source of research regarding this. I can understand how some people are sensitive to the disruption of noises and how that can induce stress to those individuals, but the connection between noise and heart damage seems indirectly related.

sjg007• 5 years ago

With the new apple watches and iphones it should be possible to get a widespread map of noise pollution even finer grained than EPA monitors.

graeme3• 5 years ago

True. Noise gets logged in the health app from the apple watch, so a research study could tap into that quite easily. They already do that for heart rate and other metrics.

elicash2• 5 years ago

A bit unrelated, but I'd love to use a Zillow-like platform but filtering homes for noise pollution, light pollution, air pollution. (Also climate and flooding.)

Most people wouldn't use it, because they've basically decided which city/town (bc of work/family) and are just trying to narrow down which home. But it'd be very useful to me, personally, as someone who can do my job from anywhere. Also, I'd imagine it's impossible to get detailed enough data for some of this stuff. Noise being the toughest, I'd bet, though maybe you could approximate based on various factors (traffic, etc).

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

I've thought about how one would design and market soundproofed apartments and houses. You'd need to condense full-spectrum measurements of ambient levels, indoor transmission, and outdoor transmission into just one or a few numbers or letter grades, and convince other apartment buildings and homebuilders to let you run measuring microphones and speakers for a week.

Are there any standards for soundproofed construction like there are for energy-minimized construction?

telchar2• 5 years ago

There is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_transmission_class

wmeredith2• 5 years ago

If you've ever been inside a house that has insulation installed in all interior walls, the sound mitigation is really something else. That's a feature quite high on my list, if I ever construct a home.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

I'm not sure how soundproof it needs to be but my Marine Corps barracks never had sounds come through the ceilings or walls. Concrete.

calmworm• 5 years ago

Realtor.com and the Realtor app have noise level and flood risk maps.

lowercased2• 5 years ago

They need to be able to use it as an actual filter when searching. That's not there yet. And... I'm unsure how accurate it is - maybe better for some areas - but I've seen some "low noise" areas that are... pretty noisy, imo.

0xffff2• 5 years ago

As someone who pretty much fits the category of " basically decided which city/town (bc of work/family) and are just trying to narrow down which home", I would love to have this service. There are huge differences in noise levels throughout any given city, and it's not always obvious from just a satellite map. Unfortunately, it's a very hard problem to solve. I did a lot of research before renting my current house. I thought I had done pretty well for about 2 hours after I moved in, then I found out that my next-door neighbor has two little dogs with a high-pitched bark and Olympic-swimmer level lungs. The neighbor has absolutely no interest in trying to control them. It would be a hell of an app that could have warned me about that.

throwaway0a5e2• 5 years ago

I wish you could filter by what other people have searched for.

I want to look at the neihborhoods that all the people who don't give a crap about anything are clicking on.

Listening to jake brakes and a train a few times a day is a lot bad for my health than easily irritated neighbors.

bagacrap• 5 years ago

air pollution is highly localized, e.g. near (downwind from) freeways. Not enough people have purpleair sensors to make this a reality.

elicash2• 5 years ago

You could have a mixture of exact scores like for whole cities < https://aqicn.org/map/usa/ > and then combine that with localized scores based on things like being near a freeway.

Walk Score isn't an exact science, but is still a useful measure.

whiteboard182• 5 years ago

We’ve started working on some functionality like you are describing - to show noise levels for a given real estate location. If you have a sec, I’d love any constructive feedback. (The demo is just U.S. locations for now but the service is global)”. And then add the link: https://tether-data.com/noise-report/

Abishek_Muthian• 5 years ago

Those who are living in the noisy environments, have you tried the recent noise cancelling earphones/headphones? Do you prefer noise cancelling or adding white noise over long period of use?

Also I'm looking for noise cancellation algorithms which can add noise cancellation to any generic TWS earphones by processing through smartphone[1]. Google has added audio amplification for any TWS earphones through android as an accessibility feature, but not the noise cancellation; Is it because the latency matters for the latter more?

[1]I've added the link to it on my profile.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

Noise cancelling doesn't do much for impact noises which seem to annoy people more.

lukastr0• 5 years ago

Noise cancelling, in order to work really well, requires extremely fast processing and microphones that are directly on the ears. And then you need earphones with very well-defined frequency characteristics - which would make any approach with generic earphones very difficult. And not only that, the exact distance between earphones and ear matters a lot - that's why high-end ANC headphones like the Sony ones include a calibration routine.

pims6• 5 years ago

I've been suffering from tinnitus and hyperacusis for over three years. It led me to read a bit about hearing in general, and more and more studies show that most of the hearing loss we experience as we grow old is nothing natural but the result of the years of abuse we inflict upon our ears in our everyday lives ( https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/33/6357 ). Even though my situation is specific, this article does not surprise me at all. I believe it has also been proven that loud noise reduces brain activity levels and cognitive performance.

I wasn't a fan of loud noises before my hyperacusis appeared, but now I've grown to absolutely despise motorcycle drivers who seem to feel obligated to make as much noise as possible in dense areas, accelerating as strong as they can regardless of common sense and speed limits. I won't even mention those doing this late at night throughout the city, not worried about waking up hundreds if not thousands of people.

I've moved out of a big city to be less exposed to traffic noise, unfortunately the area I'm now in is coastal and often has said drivers "enjoying" the coastline in their own unique way as soon as the sun is out.

I hope that this major public health issue will be tackled in the upcoming years, and that strong limitations on engine noise will be put in place, enforced by sound radars, heavy fines, and incentives to go electric.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

Some European countries like Austria have been doing this for many years. Roadside noise level measurements with harsh penalties. If you exceed the limits, they take the licence plate off.

pims6• 5 years ago

Lucky them, here in France we're probably far from ever seeing such laws given the high percentage of bikers who simply don't care about making harmful levels of noise even right next to small kids.

I've considered reaching out to my neighborhood council about it, but I'll probably have moved again due to motorcycles before it goes up to the city/county/department/region...

defterGoose3• 5 years ago

OMFG Los Angeles neeeeeds this. 'Course we need the more stringent European licensing requirements too, but....I can make do without that.

CountDrewku2• 5 years ago

I lived in Austria for half a year and never saw this being enforced. In fact, I was awoken daily by 2-cycle dirt bikes echoing through the streets. Austrians never seemed the type to follow laws all that well and I doubt they're enforced as much as you think they are. There's a general disdain for anything authoritarian there (for good reason).

Zebfross• 5 years ago

Just a PSA. I thought I had tinnitus a while back because that’s the first search engine hit on “ringing in ears”, but it turns out it was just ear wax touching my eardrum. If it happens to anyone else, it may be easy to fix.

pims6• 5 years ago

Yep just get your ears properly checked by a good ENT when it first appears. There can be numerous causes and some of them can and should be treated early. Also do not panic, in many cases it will go away.

In some other cases like mine it's unfortunately not as likely to disappear, so protect your ears and wear earplugs at concerts or anywhere noise is at uncomfortable levels.

scruple• 5 years ago

hyperacusis

TIL. Thanks.

defterGoose3• 5 years ago

Ive been wondering about my hearing issues lately, too. I have occasional "bursts" of tinnitus, i assume from my hypertension, but ive also been looking for answers regarding a weirder phenomenon ive started noticing in recent years. Hyperacusis seems to be the closest word for it, but for me it manifests as isolated spurious noises seeming louder than they are. It sounds like someone turned up the gain on my ears for a split second before the sound occured, and then right after, returned it to its normal volume envelope. Its startling and unsettling, but i dont have the "conversational voices are too loud" type of symptom. Anything similar for you?

pims6• 5 years ago

If by bursts of tinnitus you mean a high pitched noise for a few seconds (sometimes longer), these are rather normal and very common, not much to worry about I believe.

Is the sensitivity you describe specific to certain sounds? If so, that could be some kind of hyperacusis as it can be very focused on certain frequencies. Mine is mild/moderate so I can tolerate a loud discussion for a while, but stuff like broken glass is simply unbearable, it feels like the glass is breaking inside my ears and usually makes them painful for a couple of hours.

Red_Leaves_Flyy• 5 years ago

I see the top few comments talking about motorcycles, leaf blowers, and automobiles.

My pet peeve are jets. Living within ~5 miles of an air force base, or any major airport, is terrible. Everyone stops what they're doing for the for whatever duration a plane is in the area. Local and state politicians are powerless to do anything because of "the jobs".

joncrane• 5 years ago

That's a good one. Mine is helicopters. Military Blackhawks and a Sikorsky known as Marine-1 at times, to be specific.

I live on the flight path from the White House to Camp David and they practice this flight multiple times per week. It makes sense because they need a full roster of people so they can provide minimum 2-deep 24 hour coverage and the folks need to be able to do it in their sleep in any weather conditions.

It's still jarring to hear a trio of Blackhawks fly past me at a relatively low altitude.

undefined12• 5 years ago

imagine adding flying cars to the mix! it'd be hard to escape.

garyclarke27• 5 years ago

Low frequency, wall penetrating, non-stop, droning noises like heat pumps (becoming pervasive with the green energy bandwagon) and a/c compressors are even worse than intermittent noise like planes or vehicles. They go all night and drive me crazy ruining my sleep and health.

solinent• 5 years ago

It's really more about signal-to-noise ratio I'd say, if there are often loud noises then your brain will have to attend to them, if there is constantly a fan noise, for example, then your brain will actually focus since there is no signal--but I've definitely found it's best to get rid of both in almost all domains.

jborichevskiy6• 5 years ago

The Atlantic also wrote "Why is the World so Loud?" in 2019, a great read into the psychological effects of noise pollution and the legal means by which people try and fight back.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/the-end...

thebigspacefuck• 5 years ago

I’m guessing the Atlantic office is not a quiet place

dang• 5 years ago

Discussed at the time:

Everything Is Getting Louder - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229540 - Oct 2019 (305 comments)

dgrcode5• 5 years ago

I lived in NY for 3 months and the amount of noise pollution there was insane. The one that I really couldn't believe was the J train on Brooklyn's Broadway. You could be yelling at someone 3ft/1m apart and they couldn't hear you because of the train noise.

I wonder if New Yorkers realise how absolutely crazy that is.

kiliantics4• 5 years ago

As someone who lives in NY for 10 years, I don't know how I wasn't so aware before but I've lately become acutely conscious of how we are surrounded by near constant extreme noise pollution levels. Maybe most people just exist in this the way I used to, not thinking about it, it's so normalised that people can't imagine how it could be any different.

The worst to me is that people have internalised this so far that they don't see any problem in contributing to this pollution themselves. Just a few weeks ago, someone on my block wanted to move their car at 4 am on like a Wednesday for whatever reason. Unfortunately for this person, someone else had double parked next to their car overnight (a chronically common issue in Brooklyn where I live for some reason). This neighbour somehow thought it would be perfectly reasonable to start honking constantly to alert the person who should move their car to let them out. At 4 am. When they would obviously be waking up many other people nearby that had nothing to do with the issue. In my 10 years here, that level of inconsideration was still pretty shocking to me.

MetallicCloud• 5 years ago

I lived in NY for about 4 years, and I'm still amazed by the similar things I saw. For example, one day my upstairs neighbour didn't feel like pulling up the drive way, so she just parked her car in the middle of our cramped, busy one way street so she could run upstairs and grab some things.

Of course all the people stuck trying to drive down the street started honking and yelling. She got back to the car, yelled back at them and drove off.

I wouldn't consider doing something like that in a million years, but for native New Yorkers, it's par for the course.

timdaub2• 5 years ago

Here's some anecdotal evidence from my experience:

I've lived close to a loud 4 lane road for 4 years. My windows were bad too. When trucks drove over a bump in the road, I sometimes was able to notice the vibrations.

Given this radical experience and all the pain caused by sleep-deprevation and having to move away finally, I second the article's message whole-heartedly (lol).

Though I was luckily to be able to move, I've stayed sensitive to noise. It's a major stressor in my life and I take it seriously.

In fact, I think that particularly in cities, the German aurhorities should implement tighter rules when it comes to noise pollution, e.g.:

- tone down ambulance's horns or fund technical approaches that work without the high pitch sound

- stop building airports near neighborhoods and restrict air traffic heavily

- enforce stricter rules when honking for stupid reasons

- have cars comply to noise maximums

throwaway0a5e2• 5 years ago

I live just uphill of a minor state highway intersection that's near several industrial sites. I hear jake brakes going down the hill end engines going up the hill. And there's hourly-ish trains on the overlooking hill, one of the industrial sites sometimes smells a little. One of my neighbors parties. Another one has dogs that bark at everything. Yet a third has all manner of 2-stroke powered toys.

I have never been more stress free because the kind of people who live here aren't the kind of people who care what I do. Sure it would be great if I lived on a bunch of acres in the country but putting up with some noise is a pretty good middle ground.

timdaub2• 5 years ago

Fair enough. Actually, in the place I lived I could be as loud as I wanted too.

nothinggoesaway• 5 years ago

Folks with sensitivity to sound: consider supplementing chelated magnesium.

When I tried magnesium glycinate to help with sleep, I happily discovered my daytime sensitivity to loud sounds improved too. Turns out this is common: https://psychcentral.com/blog/living-with-extreme-sound-sens...

  > In my practice, 85 percent of my patients came to me with a severe magnesium deficiency. A deficiency in this mineral often leads to anxiety, mood swings, personality disorders, sound sensitivity, light sensitivity, and insomnia. Magnesium has been shown to mitigate the neurotransmitter glutamate while easing the anxiety and anger experienced by someone with most types of sound sensitivity. Chelated magnesium is one of the best types of mineral supplements as it is very small and easy for the body to absorb and make use of.

Mg deficiency is widespread in industrialized populations, due in part to nutrient depleted soils. It’s heavily implicated in medical literature for anxiety, irritability, insomnia. The link to noise sensitivity seems more anecdotal so far.

graeme3• 5 years ago

Why chelates specifically? As opposed to, say, magnesium citrate.

GloriousKoji• 5 years ago

I often hear that Chelated magnesium has the highest bio-availability of all the different types of magnesium supplements. One might think they can just take more magnesium citrate to compensate but then it might be a full on laxative at that point.

AltruisticGapHN• 5 years ago

A reminder that noise cancel headphones are amazing. If you’re solo in the summer ypu can just watch tv with the headphones, the NC is really good a5 canceling the rumble from traffic, works great in trains too.

Talking about a sony headphones above 300 eur though... but as someone healing trauma, it’s a life changer. Its not just less nouse, it gives you a bubble, an island of safety. You can get an hour of quiet before bed...

burntoutfire4• 5 years ago

Talking about a sony headphones above 300 eur though...

Agree. Living in an appartment with inconsiderate neighbors, my Sony noise cancelling headphones are a lifesaver. (the bluetooth sucks btw, I mostly use them via minijack).

Jakobeha• 5 years ago

Personally I use ear plugs (silicone). If I want to listen to music or watch a movie I have AfterShokz bone-conducting headphones. You can get both for a bit over $100 and they work better than noise-cancelling headphones.

graeme3• 5 years ago

Does anyone know what decibel thresholds are? I’ve been falling asleep with podcasts played quietly. It isn’t loud at all and feels comforting, but obviously is louder than no podcast. I’m wondering if that would be enough to trigger some of the hormonal cascade they discuss.

carapace• 5 years ago

Contrarywise, get up early before dawn and listen to the birds sing in the day. It can give you a wonderful sense of peace and fulfillment.

I don't have any scientific basis for it, but I suspect birdsong is important somehow. Almost like it's a kind of nutrient.

thethethethe• 5 years ago

I spent a year living in a house on a load road and it was awful. The worst part was the inconsistency. Every ten minutes or so a really load motorcycle or truck would drive by and shake the entire house. It was a constant distraction and it would wake me up several times a night. I left as soon as my lease up. I could see this environment taking years off your life if you in it for many years. In addition to the noise, diesel fumes would waft into my room if left the window open on a hot day. I will never live on a load road ever again, no matter how “nice” the pace is.

kingnothing• 5 years ago

This is bringing several interesting questions to my mind.

I wonder if the quality of noise has any bearing. For example, if you listen to pleasant music all day at work in an open plan office, does it have the same negative health effects as if it was road noise?

Do the deaf suffer the same effects of being exposed to noise? As in, is it a physiological effect of being near something loud or does your brain have to process the sound?

wing-_-nuts2• 5 years ago

This makes me wonder about 'white noise'? I finally caved and bought a non looping white noise machine after years of being woken up by car engines, ambulances, god forsaken LEAF BLOWERS cranking up at 7am every morning. Now, I notice I often sleep until my alarm.

I would think that constant white noise would have a positive, or at least no negative impact but I have no evidence, and googling only pulls up intermittent noise studies.

mancerayder2• 5 years ago

I've had noise issues from apartments in cities for decades, a mix of being easily bothered by music and noise from other people, and people loving to play loud music at home. Most of my friends seem a lot less bothered, to the point that they can mostly ignore it.

Not sure if it's cultural, due to individual environmental conditions growing up, or biological. I'm starting to wonder if it's biological because I'm also a light sleeper.

Reason077• 5 years ago

Noise cancelling headphones are a godsend. Someone needs to design ones that can be comfortably worn while sleeping, though!

jtsuken• 5 years ago

Hey, here is a startup idea.

I've been sitting on for a while and given my lack of engineering experience will probably never work on.

Problem:

Unnecessary/excessive noise from outdated/not properly maintained or purposefully broken devices (e.g. combustion engine powered leaf blowers, excessive and outdated reverse gear warning sounds on large vehicles, hollow motorbike ~mufflers~, garbage bins with metal wheels/lids)

Solution:

Create noise pollution maps, showing the areas with most frequent/most excessive noise pollution.

Noise data will exercise economical and political pressure putting an actual market price on the noise levels and requiring the governments to enforce noise limits on vehicles and other registered devices.

Approach 1:

Mobile apps capturing and mapping noise levels in a privacy friendly way, while providing useful diagnostics and recommendations for the users.

Approach 2:

Low power GPS-enabled devices distributed across the city contributing real-time noise data to a central database system for evaluation.

ColFrancis• 5 years ago

The big trouble you'll have is incentives. Who has an incentive to put them up in a noisy place?

filistine• 5 years ago

I can hardly wait to bring this up with the local LA Fitness manager. Gyms seem to be a Petri dish for bad experimental music which, to my ears, is noise.

whiteboard182• 5 years ago

Noise pollution hurts the heart

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