Quiet, Please: Observations on Noise

Sound Sensitivities 

“Hush! Caution! Echoland!”

—James Joyce6

Misophonia, from Greek words meaning hatred of sound, was coined by Dr Pawel J. Jastreboff, director of the Tinnitus and Hyperacusis Center at Emory University. Both Carlyle and Proust were classic misophoniacs, and they probably would have benefited from the ingenious treatments Dr Jastreboff has devised.7 However, as we'll see, it would be a mistake to consider everyone who complains about noise a crank, eccentric, or neurotic.

Several types of sound sensitivities are known, and they can be disabling. They may occur singly or overlap in combination. They include hyperacusis, a reduced tolerance for normal environmental sounds; misophonia, a general dislike or hatred of sound, as mentioned; and phonophobia, a strong fear of sound.

Most of us have misophonia for some sound or other—a fingernail scraping on a blackboard, or a clanging garbage truck in the middle of the night. If these dislikes become so severe that we avoid classrooms or refuse to have our garbage collected, this would count as phonophobia.

For most of us, the cacophony of environmental sounds has become part of our everyday existence, the price we pay for modernity. We ordinarily navigate this sound jungle without giving it much thought. Even though we may find certain sounds particularly annoying—the inane cell phone conversation at the next table in the restaurant or the whisperer behind us in the movies—most of us make our peace with these annoyances and dismiss them as just one more aggravation.

Some people cannot do this. They find certain sounds so distressing they can't ignore them. For example, there is a form of misophonia in which an individual focuses on the eating or chewing sounds that others make. Oddly, these individuals have no problem tolerating their own eating sounds. In severe cases, they cannot share a meal with family or friends and insist on eating alone. If forced to eat with others, they may become enraged and begin to tremble or even convulse. It is difficult to dismiss them as simply neurotic, because they may lead perfectly normal lives in every area except this.

The cause of such problems is unclear. It is known that certain individuals have hyperacute hearing only for sounds of a certain frequency, usually of high frequency, yet are able to tolerate sounds outside these problem frequencies. The specificity of the problem suggests an organic cause. So, too, does the fact that autistic children often experience this difficulty. The efficacy of techniques that filter out the offensive frequencies in an attempt to “retune” and normalize hearing tolerance also argues for an organic and not a predominantly psychological origin of these problems.

Individuals also can be intolerant to certain sounds at low or soft levels, such as the sound of certain consonants, such as s, t, p, or c. In this disorder, their intolerance involves not only others making these sounds but also themselves when they make them.

I've long thought that I have a touch of misophonia. The situation always involves the passenger in the next seat on an airplane—a guy who orders a beverage with ice, drains it, and continues to chomp the ice past the last remaining fragment. I am unable to say why I find this so annoying. No doubt some enterprising psychologist could dredge up some critical moment during my early years to account for this revulsion, but I consider my case too advanced and myself too far gone for a psychological approach. Besides, I don't want to accommodate to these thoughtless, human ice breakers. So I've found a mechanical solution. Some time ago, I purchased noise-reduction headphones that nicely cancel these high-pitched sounds. Now I sit patiently, serene as a yogi, while the ice explodes an elbow away.

Chew and Tell 

“But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.”

—Robert Benchley8

It's amazing what some young people will post on their personal Web sites these days. Take the case of Rani Dababneh, a 23-year-old technologist in Amman, Jordan. Rani, whose blog moniker is Rani the Brainy, is a confident young man who doesn't hesitate to reveal himself. On his blog of January 21, 2008, he describes his severe phonophobia for eating sounds. With imperfect but charming syntax, he says:

This sound is so dangerous that it flies directly to my brain corrupting every single unit that it passes by, forcing me to focus on nothing in this damn big world but this creepy sound, causing a mix of the most awful feelings in the world creating a huge pressure, depress and stress on my whole body and brain, causing a serious damage as time passes for my cells that I unwillingly may start running out of the room so I can save the rest of my cells.

I would really prefer to hear the voice of a donkey singing rather than to hear this damn voice, even if I just thought about this noise it would make me probably shake: S[o] lol, I guess this sound should be awarded with the “Quickest Mood Changer” ever instead of perfumes.

I may forcefully understand when this noise comes from old people having problems with teeth or so—but even though I believe they can move their mouths and eat while it's almost open without doing the lips touching thing that kills me the most—but I would never accept it to hear this sound from a kid or a young or any adult who has the basic manners. I guess anyone having the mouth disaster should at least warn people, maybe holding a sign: ‘Warning, I eat like a camel!!' lol or ‘Please, Keep your self 2 Rooms away while I am eating!!'9

Despite the laugh out louds (lols) in Rani's post, we get the feeling he's dead serious and has a temper. What if the eater doesn't keep two rooms away?

The Hyperacusis Network 

“Unquiet meals make ill digestions.”

—William Shakespeare10

One of the best resources for anyone with sound-sensitivity problems is The Hyperacusis Network. Their Web site, http://www.hyperacusis.net, is a treasure house of information, including therapies and therapists for various disorders. The Network's message board provides a fascinating look at the multiple ways sound sensitivity can manifest. The following is from a college student who is severely distressed by his problem and is asking for help:

I can't stand it when people make audible bodily sounds like clearing their throat or sniffing to clear their nose. If they do it rarely or quietly I don't mind so much, but more often than once every 5 minutes or so really irritates me. I find myself anxiously awaiting the next noise they will make and my attantion [sic] wanders while I dream up some invention that will selectively cancel out the noises they are making while allowing me to pay attention to the conversation around me.

I haven't always had this aversion. It started a few years back when my dad suddenly began clearing his throat loudly and repetitively at meals. Soon I became more aware of noises other poeple [sic] made. It's generally a small fraction of the population that does this enough to irritate me but it really affects me strongly. I hate eating with my family for the reason that I dread the noises my dad will make.

When I started school this month I found one classmate who sniffs his nose loudly a lot. I can make it bearable by sitting as far away from him as possible, and I figured my situtaion [sic] would be OK. However, the professor for that class constantly clears his throat loudly when he speaks and it is driving my crazy. I would like to find a way to deal with this because I find myself unable to concentrate during class.

I went on the net when I got home and looked around to see if other people have the same sort of problem and it looks like I have some form of misophonia. I'm not sure if this is a correct diagnosis but it seemed to fit what I'm feeling. Is it?

Any suggestions or requests for further information are welcomed.11

A Success Story 

“Mr. Barry, in my profession we hear many such stories. Yours is one of the most intriguing and touching I've heard in many weeks.”

—Stanley Kubrick12

Most healthcare professionals aren't well informed about the various sound sensitivities or the therapies that are available. As a result, the advice that is often given to many patients suffering from these disorders is, unfortunately, “learn to live with it.” Many individuals spend years following this advice before they stumble onto a correct diagnosis and effective treatment.

A typical case is that of Marvin Weinberger, whose success story is posted on The Hyperacusis Network's Web site. Weinberger, 54, was a productive professional with an MBA degree from Indiana University. He developed hyperacusis in the late 1970s for unknown reasons. By the early 1980s, it was so severe that he cocooned himself in his basement. All the sounds of his environment were so painful he could not endure them. He turned his basement into a tomb—bricking over the windows, removing the refrigerator to escape its hum, and growing a beard to avoid hearing the scrape of his razor. The sound of his own chewing was so loud he avoided eating and began to lose weight. In spite of wearing earplugs and industrial earmuffs, sounds continued to get through. He developed severe phonophobia, fear of noise, in addition to his profound hyperacusis.

In 1999, Weinberger stumbled across an article in a magazine published by the American Tinnitus Association. It was written by Dr Stephen Nagler, who, it turned out, was an old fraternity brother of his at Indiana University in the late 1960s. Nagler had become a surgeon, but in 1994 developed tinnitus so severely that he abandoned his practice. After seeking help from more than a dozen doctors, he finally found a specialist at the University of Maryland who successfully treated his condition. Recovered, Nagler decided to devote his career to working with patients with tinnitus and hyperacusis, and became the director of the Alliance Tinnitus and Hearing Center in Atlanta, and chairman of the board of directors of the American Tinnitus Association.

Weinberger contacted Nagler, who made a house call on his old fraternity brother. Nagler began a treatment called tinnitus retraining therapy, which is used for hyperacusis as well as for tinnitus. The therapy consists of wearing a small sound-generating device that resembles a hearing aid. Nagler explained that in hyperacusis, usually for unknown reasons, something goes awry with the brain's ability to judge the level and nature of sounds. It can no longer distinguish between loud and soft sounds; they all begin to register as loud.

As therapy proceeded over many months, Nagler made frequent adjustments on Weinberger's sound generator, working with him via telephone and e-mail. Weinberger responded well to tinnitus retraining therapy. He pulled the bricks and plywood away from his windows. Today he listens to the radio, talks on the phone, and goes to movies. He drives—traffic noise is no longer maddening. He's moved the refrigerator back inside the house. He's resumed shaving. His house was falling apart because he feared he could not bear the noise of repairmen; he's turned that around too.

Weinberger says, “I'm to the point that hyperacusis is not an issue in my life....And when I tell everybody I had a miracle, I mean a bona fide, actual, divine-intervention miracle.”13

Noise: The Dark Side 

“One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor.”

—Frederick Farrar14

“And silence, like a poultice, comes

To heal the blows of sound.”

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr15

Noise has been defined as unwanted sound. It can be so unwanted, so offensive, that people have lost their life protesting it.

Frank Parduski, Sr, has been dubbed “the world's first anti-noise martyr” by New Scientist magazine.16 It's an inglorious honor. Parduski, 82, was a master metal craftsman who had worked with several noted sculptors, turning their ideas into reality. On June 5, 2006, he walked into the street to try to slow down a 19-year-old motorcyclist, who continued to speed back and forth in front of Parduski's home on Rock Point Road in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The motorcyclist ran him down, throwing him 30 feet. Parduski died at the scene from multiple injuries.

Two months later, on August 17, 2006, 60-year-old Masumi Hayashi, an acclaimed photographer, artist, and professor at Cleveland State University, went to the door of her neighbor's apartment to ask him to turn down his loud music. The neighbor, Jacob Cifelli, 29, shot and killed her. He also shot and killed John Jackson, 51, a sculptor who also lived in the building. Cifelli is serving a life sentence. Perhaps Hayashi is the second known antinoise martyr.17, 18

Noise can drive people to do horrible things. On June 1, 2007, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, 18-year-old Corin Mayfield-Sparks complained to his brother Julian, 20, about the noise coming from his computer, on which he was watching a movie with friends. The dispute escalated over the evening. When Corin struck Julian with a rounder bat, Julian fetched their mother, Deanna, to intervene. As she was standing between them, Julian grabbed a two-foot-long, black samurai sword, and according to the mother, stabbed Corin in the chest. The eight-inch stab wound penetrated the heart, lung, and aorta of his younger brother, killing him. Julian's favorite movie was Quentin Tarantino's violent thriller Kill Bill, in which samurai swords play a prominent role.19

The most high-profile noise-related death in recent years is that of 40-year-old actress Adrienne Shelly, the writer, director, and one of the stars of the 2007 movie Waitress. On November 1, 2006, while working in her Greenwich Village office, she complained about something known to every New York resident: construction noise. This led to a confrontation with construction worker Diego Pillco, 19, an immigrant from Ecuador, who was renovating the apartment below her office. According to court documents, Pillco acknowledged that Shelly was initially polite, but that he got furious, throwing his hammer, pushing her out, slamming the door on her, and hurting her. When she threatened to call the police, he chased her into her office. Pillco struck her and pushed her, causing her to hit her head on a table. Fearing she was dead and worrying about deportation, he decided to fake a suicide, claiming to have gotten the idea from a book he once read. He wrapped a sheet around her neck and hung her from a shower rod in the office bathroom. Shelly's career was flowering and she was a married, adoring mother of a three-year-old daughter. Her family believed she would never have considered killing herself. The police were also suspicious. Within days, they tracked down Pillco by matching a shoe print he'd left in the bathroom. Following his arrest and several hours of questioning, Pillco admitted his crime and was charged with second-degree murder. “I was having a bad day,” he explained. Forensic experts determined the cause of death to be “compression to the neck,” meaning that Shelly was alive at the time Pillco hanged her.20, 21, 22, 23

In reviewing cases such as these, I've gotten the impression that noise offenders are often antisocial, aggressive individuals whose shortcomings aren't limited to being noise freaks. In the Hayashi homicide above, Cifelli, her killer, was on probation for an unrelated weapons offense. According to police reports, he'd been arrested in November 2005 after authorities found him carrying a sword with a 30-inch blade. Asked why he was carrying the weapon, Cifelli said he thought it was cool.17

The impression that noise aggression and antisocial behavior are often paired is reinforced by the experience of New Yorkers. In October 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched Operation Silent Night, designed to combat noise, the city's number one quality-of-life complaint. Bloomberg and the New York Police Department meant business; enforcement measures included the towing of vehicles, the use of sound meters to document offenses, seizure of audio equipment, summonses, fines, and arrests. A year after Operation Silent Night was initiated, the city's crime rate fell to its lowest rate since 1968. Operation Silent Night was given partial credit for the decline by the Mayor's office, because in the course of investigating nearly 100,000 noise complaints received on the Quality of Life hotline, the New York Police Department also uncovered thousands of other offenses. These resulted in over 111,000 summonses and 7,400 arrests, only a fraction of which ended up being specifically due to the noise infractions themselves. The pattern seemed clear: unsavory characters often make a lot of racket.24

Noise alone, however, doesn't turn nice people into monsters. “Noise exposure alone is not believed to be sufficient to produce aggression,” according to a comprehensive report by the World Health Organization (WHO). “However, in combination with provocation or pre-existing anger or hostility, it may trigger aggression. It has also been suspected that people are less willing to help [others], both during exposure and for a period after exposure.”25

Boom Boys and Their Cars 

IF ITS 2 LOUD, YOU'RE 2 OLD

—Bumper sticker on a boom car

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The connection of noisemaking with aggression and antisocial behavior is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the boom-car culture, which has been extensively investigated by sociologist Michael P. Wright of the University of Oklahoma in Norman.26 Wright's interest in “boom-car boys” was triggered in 1999 when he read a report about a girl who died in an ambulance because it could not reach the hospital quickly enough. The chief paramedic involved said that emergency medical technician drivers often have trouble with cars getting in their way and stalling them. He added that today's cars are “almost soundproof with loud stereos,” implying that the drivers are impervious to the sounds of approaching ambulances.

Boom cars and loud music often bring out the worst in some people. In 1999, a homeless man in Saint Petersburg, Florida, was beaten and kicked to death by two young men when he or someone with him complained about their loud car stereo as they cruised by.27

Sometimes altercations spawned by boom cars turn out badly for the car owner. In 2003, an unhappy resident, upset about loud hip-hop and rap music blasting from a parked auto at around one am, confronted the car owner. Fisticuffs ensued, during which the boom-car owner was killed.28

Noise is one of the main reasons people sell their homes and relocate. Businesses also flee for the same reason. In 1997, Santa Ana, California, the state's ninth largest city, had a problem with up to 1,000 boom cars cruising a particular area of their city on Sunday evenings, “cruise night.” The noise problem was compounded, the police said, by the use of drugs, alcohol, violence between rival street gangs, and gang members firing their guns into homes and vehicles while yelling obscenities. Santa Ana's police force was overwhelmed by the 4,000 annual phone complaints and criticisms of poor police service. The boom-car traffic made it nearly impossible for them to respond to legitimate emergencies. “Cruising,” a police report said, “a seemingly harmless event, was the cause of traffic gridlock, noise, general disorder, crime, violence, and great fiscal expense.” Merchants and residents began bailing out of the areas most affected. Backed by community support and the California State Legislature, the Santa Ana police department instituted a Cruising Abatement Project designed to discourage cruising. Signs, written warnings, controlled vehicular movement, and personal contact with police officers worked. There were no lawsuits or citizen complaints of officer misconduct, and the constitutionality of the program was not challenged. Two and a half years later, cruising-related criminal acts and boom-car–related calls for police assistance had been virtually eliminated. Businesses and residents returned to a safe and peaceful environment.29

Are these responses overwrought? Are the freedoms of speech and expression eroded when communities rebel against boom-car boys? “Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed,” Edmund Burke believed. Against this, defenders of boom behavior often dismiss it as “boys being boys” or “boys having fun.” Other defenders play the race card: police will use antiboom ordinances to harass minority, nonwhite youth. “This is rubbish,” says Wright. “People stopped by police under this law would be calling attention to themselves with their illegal behavior, not their race. Further, as you [can] see from the ads, the boom car marketers primarily target white boys.”30

Wright's sympathies go instead to the victims of the “noise thugs” who are blasted out of their sleep at three am. “How many...people have to suffer stress and sleep deprivation caused by boom-car boys?” he asks. “Do the bleeding hearts care about the boom-car boys' victims? And please, don't let anyone tell you that boom-car boys deserve protection under the principle of ‘free expression.' Free expression means that the government should not interfere in the communication between a speaker or performer and his willing audience. It does not mean that any jerk with a powerful amplifier should be able to force people to hear trash noise we don't want to hear. This is not free expression. It is audio violence and noise trespass.”30

To be fair, not all boom offenders are young. On November 6, 2007, Denver's Rocky Mountain News, in an article titled “Bronco Horn Divides Neighbors,” described how Jeri and Larry Priest, both 69 and die-hard Denver Bronco fans, devised a way to acoustically celebrate each time the Broncos score. Larry, a retired iron worker and former Marine, made a contraption from six car horns, a flashing orange light, and a car battery. He installed it in their front yard, with a gadget permitting someone inside the house to trigger its blast. The invention points across the street toward a gated community that's next to the working-class neighborhood where the Priests live. The Priests blow the horns six times for a touchdown, once for an extra point, and three times for a field goal—but never after 9 pm, although this is disputed by the family next door.

Therein lies the rub. The head of the offended family is a 38-year-old attorney, whose house is 50 feet away from the Bronco horn. “Everyone thinks it's fun,” he said. “My wife is 14 weeks pregnant. They've had that thing pointed at my house the past four years I've lived there.”

The Priests maintain that nobody else ever complained before. Perhaps that's so, but the Rocky Mountain News says they are now “taking some heat” from the neighborhood. As the paper states, “[The]...invention does nothing but blow out your eardrums....As you'd suspect, the neighbors aren't particularly pleased about it.”

Things got nasty on October 21, when the Broncos scored 31 points in a game with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The attorney, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation, filed a disorderly conduct complaint against Jeri Priest. The Priests won't give an inch. “He's trying to intimidate us,” Jeri says indignantly. “We're almost 70 years old....But he picked the wrong old people to pick on.” Larry, who uses an oxygen tank because of lung problems, admitted he lost his cool and challenged the attorney to a fight, claiming they'd reached an agreement on which the attorney reneged. The Priests say they'll move the horns only if a judge asks them to. Although the Priests have agreed not to blow their beloved horn before the case is heard in court, that doesn't mean they've agreed to be quiet. Jeri has defiantly put up signs in her yard saying, “Honk if you like the Broncos.”31, 32

Noisemakers are usually considered to be young, and noise complainers are assumed to be cranky oldsters, but this stereotype is often incorrect. As this unfortunate example reveals, these roles are sometimes reversed; noise perpetrators are occasionally in their golden years and complainers in the bloom of youth.

Filipe Fortes is a stylish twentysomething Seattle consultant who lives 15 feet above First Avenue in a studio whose single-pane windows don't block much of the sound from the motorcycles and boom cars on the street below. “Noise pollution is one of the great drawbacks of our culture,” he blogs.34 “It seems like few in my generation take the risk of hearing loss seriously. Concerts, clubs, and car stereos are all needlessly loud; my only solace is that most of the ghetto-posturing teenagers and insecure motorcycle riders will be mostly deaf by 35....I wish I could go back and make my fourteen-year-old self wear earplugs in order to prevent my tinnitus.”33 As a rebuttal to the motorcycles and boom cars that are disrupting his life, Fortes recommends a raunchy rant, “Dear Hellishly Loud Motorcycle and Boom Car Owners/Riders,” at http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/27001847.html. Warning: this potty-mouth posting is from someone who is fed up and angry at urban noise aggressors and should be considered X-rated.

Health Effects 

“Such insidious effects [of noise] on our health can happen even when we're asleep and unaware that we're exposed, as our bodies still produce a similar physiological response [as when we're awake].”

—Andy Coghlan, New Scientist35

In March 2006, researchers at Berlin's Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at Charité University Medical Center reported in the European Heart Journal that chronic noise exposure may increase the risk of heart attack in both men and women.36 The researchers enrolled 4,115 consecutive heart attack survivors from Berlin's 32 major hospitals and matched them with controls admitted for conditions believed unrelated to noise, like inguinal hernia or goiter. The researchers checked workplace noise levels as well as environmental noise where each patient lived. Using standardized interviews, all patients were also queried about the degree of noise annoyance they experienced.

Chronic exposure to noise at work was associated with increased heart attack in men but not women. However, chronic exposure to environmental noise in general, such as city sounds, tripled the risk of heart attack in women and increased it by 50% in men. In neither men nor women was the level of annoyance alone a statistical risk factor for heart attack. However, in women there was a suggestive trend toward risk increase because of annoyance.

The risk for men from work noise did not rise incrementally with increasing noise levels. A threshold seemed to occur beyond which risk remained constant. The threshold was around 60 decibels (dB), which is about the level of noise in a large busy office. If men were exposed to this level of noise at work, they had around a 50% greater heart attack risk than individuals exposed to levels less than 60 dB. For women, exposure to environmental noise at 60 dB or more tripled the risk of heart attack. Familiar risk factors—smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and elevated cholesterol—were also exposed as risk factors in the study.

This much-heralded report did not prove that noise damages the heart. To do that, disease-free individuals would have to be exposed to noise and compared to controls not exposed. Still, most experts believe the correlations between noise and health are so consistent and strong that it would be foolish to ignore them.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that workers can safely be exposed to 90 dB for up to eight hours. The Berlin researchers say this is too high and that a level between 65 and 70 dB is more realistic. In Europe, workers exposed to 85 dB or greater are required to wear ear protection. That may protect ears, say the researchers, but not hearts.37

“Noise kills in much the same way as stress does,” says Andy Coghlan of New Scientist, in a review of noise and health developments.35 Noise causes heightened sympathetic arousal, as indicated by increased blood levels of stress hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol, and an elevation of resting blood pressure.

It isn't just the heart that is at risk. One of the most complete reviews of noise's toll on humans is an exhaustive 1999 WHO report, “Guidelines for Community Noise,” available at http://www.who.int/docstore/peh/noise/noiseindex.html.38 In addition to cardiovascular effects of noise, among the adverse effects that the WHO considers well documented are “hearing impairment; interference with speech communication; disturbance of rest and sleep; psychophysiological, mental health and performance effects; effects on residential behavior and annoyance; as well as interference with intended activities.”39

As a result of the growing indictment of noise, in August 2007 WHO released shocking statistics estimating the number of Europeans killed or disabled by noise exposure. “For example,” says Andy Coghlan, in reporting this development, “chronic and excessive traffic noise is implicated in the deaths of 3 percent of people in Europe with ischemic heart disease. Given that 7 million people around the globe die each year from heart disease, and assuming an average exposure to traffic, that would put the annual death toll from exposure to noise at 210,000 deaths.”35 This compares with an estimated four million people who die worldwide annually from smoking-related illnesses.40

The WHO will finalize its estimates on the damages caused by noise in 2008. It will issue guidelines on exposure levels that can be used by local and national governments in justifying tough antinoise rules. This is a major development in noise abatement efforts, rather like the landmark U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health in 1964. The WHO's estimates, like the Surgeon General's report, will likely transform noise in the public's eye from the category of a mere nuisance or annoyance to that of a lethal factor in health.

The most sickening affirmation of the degrading effects of noise on humans is its ongoing use in “rough interrogation” in U.S. military prisons in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and secret prisons around the world.41 If noise did not mentally erode the psyche, it would not be used for this purpose. Interrogators have long tried to perfect torture techniques that leave their victims alive and unmarked. Unrelenting exposure to yelling, loud music, and obnoxious sounds continues to be used to demoralize, disorient, and break down a prisoner, often in combination with sleep deprivation, heat, cold, and water torture or “waterboarding.”42 It is tragically paradoxical that, although many healthcare professionals and researchers are working diligently to abate the effects of noise in our society, other physicians and psychologists have been complicit in its use in torture chambers that are controlled by our government.43

Our Task 

“Who hears the fishes when they cry?”

—Henry David Thoreau44

In a speech in 2007 advocating noise control before the British House of Commons, Dr Tony Wright stated, “If Governments do not act effectively against the daily incivilities inflicted by some people on everybody else, not only will such incivility grow, but its victims will draw the conclusion that Governments are either impotent or indifferent in the face of the problem. That in turn will bring consequences for both individuals and society that we would do well to try to avoid.”45

Resisting the modern din, however, can seem as hopeless as shouting into a hurricane. Yet, we must oppose it, for the future of civil society and our health are at stake. There is good news: in cities across America, efforts to control noise have made progress that, in many cases, is dramatic. For information about antinoise organizations in your area, consult the Web site of the Right to Quiet Society, a Vancouver-based clearinghouse for noise-control efforts around the world, at http://www.quiet.org/. Another excellent Web site, which provides specific measures in noise abatement, is the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse at http://www.nonoise.org/library.htm.

The assumption that noise is only a human problem is a limited view. Any creature that relies on auditory signals for survival is at risk. It's not just land-based animals and birds that suffer from noise; marine animals are also harmed. Regrettably, we have turned our oceans into an acoustic hell in the name of science, security, and commerce. For a review of how noise affects the world's creatures, see http://airandnoise.com/Animals.html or a comprehensive report by the Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior at http://www.nonoise.org/library/animals/litsyn.htm.

A Great Irony 

It is deeply ironic that, although noise now threatens us, our very existence may have depended on it. Our universe, most cosmologists believe, originated in the big bang, the noisiest-ever explosion that occurred some 13.7 billion years ago.46 Our universe's deafening birth pangs persist in the form of background radiation, a subsonic hum that pervades the entire cosmos.

But was our universe's birth really noisy? If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

We should consider carefully our response to the epidemic of modern noise, lest the lessons we need to learn fall eventually on deaf ears.