Last Updated on October 29, 2024
Noise may not be the first thing you think of when you think of pollution, but our world is surprisingly polluted by noise. Here’s what to know about how noise pollution may be affecting your health and what you can do to protect yourself and your family.
WHAT IS NOISE POLLUTION?
You’re familiar with the concept of pollution as something human activity adds to the environment that is harmful to humans, animals, or plants, such as air pollution caused by car emissions or water pollution caused by the discharge of industrial chemicals. You may have read about how these pollutants are negatively affecting human health.
In the case of noise pollution, the thing added to the environment is extra sound. While it can be harder to appreciate how too much sound could harm the health of humans or animals, researchers are finding that in fact it does. More on how exactly in the next section.
The Clean Air Act contains provisions meant to safeguard citizens from the health effects of noise pollution.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has tracked how noise in neighborhoods impacts people’s satisfaction with where they live, and noise is the leading cause of dissatisfaction. Think about the discomfort you feel when you’re exposed to loud noise, and now think about how dealing with sound pollution daily over the long term might affect your overall sense of well-being and contentment.
The age of fossil-fuel driven transportation has not surprisingly added a lot of noise to the world. What may surprise you, however, is how pervasive that noise is, reaching even to places we think of as wilderness. Striking maps of the U.S. show areas of quiet in 1900 compared to today, when the noise of trains, planes, cars and other tools of daily life make quiet a rarity.
Automobile traffic has tripled in the last three decades, while urban populations have grown rapidly. The increase in popularity of online shopping and grocery deliveries also means noisy trucks disturb the peace of even less-busy neighborhoods several times most days.
Further, recent decades have brought us numerous noisy inventions, from giant ride-on mowers to now ubiquitous leaf-blowers, the bane of existence for anyone who relishes quiet.
Leaf blowers are also horrible emitters of air pollution, by the way. If you have a landscaping service that uses one, encourage them to try a battery-powered one or go back to old-fashioned raking. Really, people used to clear their leaves just fine with raking, and the tradeoffs just don’t make leaf blowers worth it.
Whenever it’s warm enough, I like to take my work outside. Writing outside exposes me to fresh air and natural light, both linked to better health. Getting outside has numerous health benefits, from stress relief to improved immune function.
Living in a climate where this is possible at most five months per year, I get exceptionally aggravated when instead of enjoying the sounds of rustling leaves and birds chirping, my ears are assaulted by the noise of heavy machinery. Sometimes the noise is so loud and so constant, I have to abandon my beloved porch and take shelter indoors. With a limited number of porch days available, you can imagine this can get pretty frustrating.
My town isn’t especially large, but when I stopped to record exactly how often noise intruded on the sounds of nature, I was astonished at how often mechanical noise makes it impossible to hear the birds in my yard.
In addition to passing cars and the occasional garbage or delivery truck, during seasons when construction is happening nearby, many days it’s hard to get even a few minutes in a row to enjoy the peace that sent me out onto the porch in the first place.
And don’t even get me started on lawn mowing. I swear my neighborhood must have a sign-up sheet ensuring no one mows at the same time. Seriously, it seems that pretty much every hour of the day someone else in earshot of my porch turns on a lawn mower. (I got rid of our lawn long ago, so no one’s shared the schedule with me.)
Even in those few moments of relative quiet, I can hear the distant hum of traffic from the county road nearly a mile away, or airplanes passing overhead, or the train sounding its horn as it crosses the town’s streets. When I kept a log for a few days, I found there was rarely a whole minute when I couldn’t hear sounds from machines, many of them loud enough to drown out bird song entirely.
If I listen carefully in the moments between machinery, I can hear leaves rustling and a variety of birds, but also a pretty constant hum of traffic, construction and mowers a mile away or more. I never realized how noisy my quiet town was!
Try it for yourself. If you stop and listen, what sounds can you hear?
HEALTH EFFECTS OF NOISE POLLUTION
What are the effects of this incessant din on our health and well-being? You’re probably aware that prolonged exposure to loud noise can damage hearing. But the health impacts turn out to go far beyond your ears.
In addition to hearing loss, people routinely exposed to sound pollution have increased risk of metabolic disorders, decreased cognitive function, and mental health challenges, in addition to several other adverse health effects. Read on for more details.
NOISE POLLUTION’S EFFECTS ON STRESS HORMONES AND CHRONIC DISEASES
Research has shown that we experience this elevated background noise as stress, causing our levels of stress hormones to rise. Certainly while I’m out on my porch thinking about nature’s soothing qualities, having the landscaper across the street switch from mower to leaf blower and back again indeed stresses me out, the opposite of what I’m seeking. It doesn’t help that their noisy machines make me upset about climate pollution and the problems monoculture lawns cause for wildlife.
But even for people not thinking about these things, their bodies are wired to respond to noise with a stress response. You may have heard that chronic stress has some seriously harmful health effects.
When our cortisol levels are chronically elevated, we may develop hypertension and heart disease, leading causes of death in developed countries. Chronic stress may also decrease immune function.
The World Health Organization estimates that noise robs western Europeans of 1.5 million healthy life years annually.
—> Read more about ways to alleviate stress and reduce cortisol.
DISTURBED SLEEP, MENTAL HEALTH, AND COGNITIVE IMPACTS
When noise disturbs our sleep, the health impacts can get more serious, as poor sleep is also associated with decreased immunity and chronic health conditions like metabolic syndrome. Numerous studies have shown that routine exposure to elevated noise levels is correlated with increases in cardiovascular disease and stroke.
Increased noise levels also can have profound impacts on children. Several studies have found poorer learning outcomes in students who go to school near roadways and airports. The academic performance of kids in classrooms subject to traffic noise falls below peers in classrooms that are buffered from noise. Kids are also sensitive to the health impacts of noise and register higher levels of stress hormones and elevated blood pressure if they attend schools with elevated noise levels.
One study found that excessive noise negatively affected children’s mental health.
THE BENEFITS OF QUIET
Quiet areas, on the other hand, seem to improve health. If you’ve sought out a serene spot in nature to help you decompress from a stressful day, you understand this intuitively. A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health concluded that “relative to noisier areas, quiet areas facilitate restoration, or impede insult, to health.”
Of course, those areas of peace and quiet have become decidedly harder to find, as the maps above show. Even in areas we consider wilderness, like vast national parks, the sounds of human machinery have become all too common. Most concerning, it turns out that human-generated noise has significant impacts on the wildlife that call these areas home.
A 2017 study published in the journal Science examined acoustical data gathered by the U. S. National Park Service and found that in 63% of protected areas “anthropogenic noise doubled background sound levels.” In 21% of protected areas, they found sound levels ten times that of natural background, including in the habitats of endangered species.
Elevated noise levels can make it more difficult for animals to find prey and distract them from normal behavioral patterns, researchers posit. Sound pollution not only interferes with animals’ abilities to use hearing for survival, it stresses them as it does us, affecting their health and behavior. Even plants may feel the effects, as noise can scare off the animals responsible for scattering seeds.
This article from the New Yorker has more about studies that scientists have done on the impacts of noise on wildlife — even underwater!
REDUCING NOISE POLLUTION
The good news is that progress has already been made to reduce noise pollution. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), for example, reports that though the number of flights has risen in recent decades, the number of Americans exposed to “significant aircraft noise” has fallen sharply, from 7 million in 1975 to just 309,000 in 2012. This doesn’t mean aircraft noise has disappeared from the rest of our lives altogether, but technological improvements have certainly helped reduce it.
Awareness of the impact of sound pollution has also spurred efforts to exclude more machinery from national parks and work for noise abatement in residential neighborhoods. Founder and Executive Director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse Les Blomberg has made it his mission to support activists lobbying for ever-more elusive quiet. The site maintains resources for activists to use in educating the public and working on noise issues in their communities.
I got in touch with Blomberg for an article I was writing back in 2017, while he was attending Noise Con, an annual conference devoted to noise control. Blomberg counseled, “There is too much noise today. The world is as loud as it has been. Noise is a problem that has to be solved as a community. That means regulating and reducing noise from commercial and industrial sources; vehicles, trains, and airplanes; and quieting the worst noise makers.“
Much to my delight, Blomberg was delivering a paper on the noise of lawn mowers. He spent more than a decade measuring the decibel output of nearly 500 mowers. His tests reveal that reel mowers produce the least noise by far, while recent improvements in electric mowers make them significantly quieter than gas-powered push mowers, which have improved very little. The noise levels of ride-on mowers have not improved at all.
Blomberg notes, “significantly quieter mowers could significantly improve the suburban soundscape, while still maintaining the suburban landscape.”
As awareness of the contributions lawns make to environmental problems, perhaps there will be fewer of them to mow. Learn more about ecological landscaping practices to make your yard more environmentally friendly.
Lead by example on your block with climate-friendly and labor-saving alternatives to grass like drought-tolerant groundcovers.
Also consider switching to a human-powered mower for any grass you do have. Reel mowers make a pleasant swishing sound as they mow and don’t emit all that CO2. Plus you never have to fill a gas can or change the oil. If a reel mower isn’t practical for your situation, try a quiet electric mower to cut down on both noise and climate pollution. Then talk up the advantages of less lawn and non-gas mowing to your neighborhood. All of you can enjoy some extra quiet!
Spreading awareness of the serious impacts of noise pollution could help make our soundscapes more pleasant and healthy. Tools from the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse can help you work with your community to enact ordinances aimed at reducing sound pollution. Cities all over the U. S. have successfully banned leaf blowers in recent years, and you can explore the possibility in your own community.
Speaking to neighbors about reducing or eliminating sources of extra noise can also make a significant difference. If you’re concerned about noise pollution, Blomberg advises that “The first step people should take to quiet the world is to make less noise than their neighbors.”
Addressing noise pollution at the source is best when you can, but when that’s not feasible, here are some ways to reduce the impact of noise on your life:
- Insulate your house. Besides saving on energy costs, insulating and sealing your house can help protect you from noise pollution outside. You can do additional soundproofing if you live near a busy roadway or airport.
- In your yard, planting trees and hedges can shield you from some of the noise. Plus they’ll save energy while capturing carbon.
- If nighttime noise is a problem, earplugs and white noise in your bedroom could help mask it.
Just writing about noise pollution made me feel more stressed, and learning about its health effects made matters worse. I’m even more aware now of the frequent rumblings of trucks and the unpleasant whine of lawnmowers. If the racket in my neighborhood continues, I’m considering some noise-cancelling headphones for my porch sessions. Of course, I won’t hear the birds or the leaves rustling, but I also won’t have to listen to all that machinery either.
How does noise pollution affect you and what do you do about it?
Looking for more ways to make your life greener and healthier? Check out some of these useful articles:
- Shortcuts to a Sustainable Lifestyle
- Getting Started with Zero Waste Living
- Why You Need a Water Filter
- Home Energy Audit: The Best Investment You’ll Ever Make on Your House
Save this info on noise pollution for later!
Photo credits in cover and pin: Antonio Guillem
Susannah is a proud garden geek and energy nerd who loves healthy food and natural remedies. Her work has appeared in Mother Earth Living, Ensia, Northern Gardener, Sierra, and on numerous websites. Her first book, Everything Elderberry, released in September 2020 and has been a #1 new release in holistic medicine, naturopathy, herb gardening, and other categories. Find out more and grab your copy here.
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