
Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis? - johnny313
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/is-noise-pollution-the-next-big-public-health-crisis
======
nullc
I wish California would implement something like a revenue neutral cost shift
on registration. Louder vehicle pay more (progressively with how loud they
are, quieter ones pay less-- adjusted to be a net increase in cost over the
median and a net decrease under it. (With louder defined using their noise at
0-25MH speeds)

I'd certainly feel better about the irritating motorcycles if they were
subsidizing all the quiet EVs. The bikers say the ear splitting noise is
useful to improve safety? Okay, they can pay for it.

Like other forms of pollution we don't need to immediately stop all of it to
make an improvement.

Now lets talk about dark skies...

~~~
thereisnospork
Yes because it is appropriate to have to pay more to have a safe mode of
'green' transit. Loud motorcycles are annoying; when they have a fatality rate
per mile closer to cars you be can complain on that basis.

~~~
nullc
The riders intentionally choose a less safe form of transit and gain many
benefits from doing so, including lower fuel and maintenance cost. Good for
them, but their noise is an externality: I shouldn't get less enjoyment from
my home because someone decided to use a less safe but more cost efficient
mode of transportation.

The loud noise also presumably causes something of an arms race with more
acoustically insulated, less fuel efficient, cars.

The eventual alternative is outright banning the noise. I think paying for
some of that externality would be better.

~~~
thereisnospork
I hate excessively loud bikes as much as anyone; there is a line between
'hearable' and 'earsplitting' that is often missed. Is not some noise, though,
a de minimis appropriate compense for the danger associated with choosing a
lighter weight, more environmental, and federal HOV-compliant vehicle? If the
per person transportation ecologics and economics are favorable for bikes vs.
cars shouldn't we look to improve the externalities (safety) around such
transportation methods? Even if it comes with some externtalacious discomfort?

(fwiw my current vehicle is approximately the loudest allowable per federal
regulations, because I enjoy the sound it makes, not safety per say.)

~~~
kuzehanka
> because I enjoy the sound it makes

I don't. The worst way to start my day is to be woken up by some moron revving
their Harley on the road near my home at 6.20am.

GP's point is that everyone is paying the price for the choices that operators
of motorbikes make. No one wants to listen to 'loudest allowable per federal
regulations' riding past their family home after-hours. That price needs to be
factored into the cost of operating a motorbike/truck/other loud transport
near population centres.

~~~
thereisnospork
>I don't. The worst way to start my day is to be woken up by some moron
revving their Harley on the road near my home at 6.20am.

That might be relevant if those Harley's were anywhere near the legal dB
limit.

P.S. the hate I'm getting here for stating that _I follow the law_ , to the
letter, on noise regulations is insane. If you/anyone think a straight pipe
Harley is close to legal check your facts.

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jvanderbot
Sure, maybe after we handle air pollution, carbon in the atmosphere, and
plastic, then we can talk about noise pollution.

It's so fun to point out new problems, but trying to prioritize everything is
basically prioritizing nothing.

~~~
cagenut
ah but it just so happens that the cause of most air pollution, carbon in the
atmosphere, and noise pollution in cities is the same thing: cars & trucks

~~~
closeparen
Ever lived near a train? Horn blasts, diesel fumes, dust & particulate kicked
up from the railbed.

Or a bus stop? Air brakes, audible announcements, and in some cities chirping
every few seconds to alert the blind to its presence.

~~~
cagenut
I live, and am sitting, less than 500 feet from several trains right now. I
can hear one rolling on the tracks. I can hear the ding-dong noise they play
before they close the doors on another.

It is _noooothing_ compared to the honking of any driver who feels like
anything in the universe costing them more than one half of a second deserves
an airhorn blast. Its nowhere near as annoying as the beep-beep-beep of trucks
backing up. Its much fainter than the blasting ambulance and fire truck sirens
necessary to pierce the bubble of car drivers attention. Its also much less
than the idling engine noise of the delivery vans.

~~~
closeparen
Honking from the (closer!) freeway barely registers. Horn blasts from the
level crossing resonate in my chest. When a train zooms by it’s at least over
quickly. When it lumbers out of the station and the whole sequence is
delivered directly to my window, I just have to pause my conversation/TV show
for a minute or two.

It was worth the substantial rent discount at the time I lived there, but
pretty extreme as noise goes.

------
rangersanger
My neighbors put up a 20 foot plus wide American flag. It’s absurdly loud.
When it storms and gets wet, it’s all I can hear inside my house.

While I don’t think it’s the next public health crisis, it’s certainly a
crisis for me. And no, there’s nothing I can do about it. Good luck getting a
city official to take up that battle. I’ve been told that maybe I’m just more
sensitive to noise than others, and that their sensors can’t pick up noises
over wind.

~~~
ohyeshedid
If you want to do something: Find your local color guard and make contact,
they're usually pretty good about reaching out and educating people about flag
care and conduct. I'm not one to be that kind of patriotic, but I've seen
various color guard groups around the country educate car dealerships,
restaurants, retail stores, etc. Either proper care was taken from that point
forward, or the flag was removed.

~~~
rangersanger
Oh, interesting idea. Thank you, I’ll give that a shot!

------
itsaidpens
The police need to crack down on incredibly loud motorcycles.

~~~
heimatau
I'm _not_ totally embedded in the motorcycle lifestyle enough to give you a
well written detail into the reasoning but I have been exposed to a lot of
riders.

I'll say this. In numerous cases, loud motorcyclists do it for their SAFETY.
Most motorists don't pay attention to a small vehicle, especially if it were
quiet. Most motorists are listening to music or something else, so the road
doesn't have their utmost attention. The LOUDness of their motorcycle jolts
the unattended motorists that a tiny vehicle is nearby.

As for the excessively loud, etc, that's above my understanding.

Finally, your biggest defense against loud motorists (in your home) is double
drywalled and good insulation in your home. It will become a lot quieter and
you'll have energy efficiencies by doing so.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>loud motorcyclists do it for their SAFETY.

I love it when someone who deliberately has a loud motorbike insists it has to
be loud for safety reasons. I have met a few people who have claimed this. It
always appears to be the only thing they do for safety reasons, the rest of
their lives being a messy blur of insanely risky life decisions.

~~~
heimatau
> It always appears to be the only thing they do for safety reasons, the rest
> of their lives being a messy blur of insanely risky life decisions

They don't wear chaps. Nor helmets. Nor anything else for safety. But let's
reduce the argument only to your perception of this issue. /s Come on. Let's
be more rational than this.

Yes, motorcyclists are risky. Yes they do numerous risky things. But
everything we (a more general claim) do is on a gradient. It's on a sliding
scale. Let's stop reducing this issue to 'loud noises don't help much. Nor has
anyone, that I met claimed this. They are reckless people'.

~~~
inflatableDodo
I am not saying that motorcyclists in general are reckless people. I am saying
that all the motorcyclists I know who have tried to claim that they have a
loud motorbike for safety reasons are at the reckless end of the spectrum,
regarding the motorcyclists that I know. And I find this contrast pretty
funny. To the extent that I have had to previously explain why I am giggling
to someone who looks like they could rip off my head with one hand. After
pointing out the bare arms and jeans that they often ride in, they admitted I
had a point, said they actually just like loud noises and started giggling
too, thankfully.

~~~
heimatau
I'm glad that you notice the spectrum of motives/rationale to the loud
mufflers.

~~~
inflatableDodo
I'm just waiting for electric bikes to take off more to see the Akira
prediction of Clowns vs Capsules.

~~~
heimatau
I don't understand why electric bikes haven't already taken off. But hopefully
the future is good because of us.

------
Shank
I hate noise pollution. I accidentally picked the worst apartment I can
imagine, and I didn't realize it until I moved in: right next to the road that
leads to the freeway on-ramp. After about 8pm, everyone wants to get on the
highway as fast as possible, which results in tons of noise pollution.

I finally broke down and got the Sony WH1000MX3 headphones, which apparently
have the "best" active noise cancellation. They do help, but they aren't
perfect. They're also super expensive, which makes them impractical for a lot
of people.

The entire problem could be solved with EVs or enforcing noise ordinances, but
I feel like it just takes one person to ruin the whole thing.

~~~
Sharlin
EVs do nothing to tire noise, which is a major part of the total noise output
of a car.

~~~
kwhitefoot
But they would make a substantial difference for medium sized lorries.

------
majos
If I could pass one dictatorial law --- hypothetically ignoring constituents
and implementation details, but limited to pretty low-consequence stuff --- I
would give serious consideration to pricing car honking at max($5, $5 x # of
seconds honking). If you _really_ need to honk, you'll happily pay $5 for the
ability. If you don't, please spare us your tantrum.

I live on a semi-busy street in a big east coast city. It's almost amazing how
many people honk and how often out of what looks mostly like frustration or
spite. At least once a month someone honks for thirty straight seconds, always
because they are mad about traffic that nobody can change.

~~~
DominikPeters
Somewhere, I saw the proposal that honking should be required to be as loud
inside the car as outside it, which provides a non-monetary disincentive.

~~~
ansgri
Now that's a good idea. Just adjust the required loudness level to be the same
as max(inside of average car right next to you, open street 10m from you),
otherwise the extremely low sound could disorient you.

------
Causality1
God I love not living in a dense city. I haven't heard a car horn in days. The
air outside smells better than the air inside. Visiting NYC my biggest
impression was how much a nightmare it would've been for me to live there. It
sounded like a vacuum running all the time. It was all dark because the
buildings blocked sunlight. The air made my nose burn. Seeing a tree and a
patch of grass on a streetcorner was like an oasis in the middle of a concrete
desert.

~~~
lupire
In the suburbs we get the buzz of gas-powered motors all day when we are home.

~~~
nullc
Some places are doing something about that:
[https://www.marinij.com/2016/11/11/marin-voice-why-
larkspurs...](https://www.marinij.com/2016/11/11/marin-voice-why-larkspurs-
proposed-leaf-blower-restrictions-go-too-far/)

[http://claycord.com/2018/12/06/group-looks-to-ban-gas-
powere...](http://claycord.com/2018/12/06/group-looks-to-ban-gas-powered-leaf-
blowers-in-walnut-creek/)

The trimmers and leaf blowers were the worst part of living in mountain view
for me. My apartment had no AC (didn't really need it 99% of the time), so
that meant open windows... and almost every day had a different neighbors lawn
service blasting noise in the morning. Sometimes waking me up, almost always
making it impossible to work from home.

------
curtis
Noise in general is a problem, but in particular it seems to me that emergency
vehicle sirens have gotten much louder over the last few years. Also, the
flashing lights on police cars seem like they're a lot brighter. Am I just
imagining this?

~~~
rootusrootus
Not sure about the siren level, but police cars have definitely been
leveraging the low wattage bright LED technology to make their cars light up
like the worlds brightest red & blue Christmas tree. Seems like they're
innovating also on different strobe patterns to see just what is most
attention getting. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't counterproductive to make
your car so violently visible that nobody can actually look directly at it.
Especially for drunks that might actually be drawn towards all those pretty
flashin' lights.

------
cadence-
AC installed between houses that are close to each other are another menace
that makes it hard to sleep if your bedroom is on the wrong side of house.
It’s not even the noise level, as it is the vibration and low frequency hum
that often has an annoying phase that makes it difficult to ignore. White
noise helps a bit, but that only works for people who are okay with blasting
white noise in their bedrooms. Same goes for swimming pool pumps. Most places
don’t have good laws regarding constant noise levels (as opposed to laws that
govern things like loud music at night). Noise pollution is a real problem
that affects your health. And most of it could be solved by engineering if the
required laws were more strict.

------
jerzyt
Seems like in the last decade, there's been a design trend in fast food
restaurant for maximizing the ambient noise. I love Chipotle's food, but I
just can't eat inside, it's so ridiculously loud. I hope this trend dies soon.

~~~
xena
That almost sounds intentional so you leave sooner. This allows the restaurant
to hold more people.

------
cromulent
"It’s aural litter — acoustical litter — and, if you could see what you hear,
it would look like piles and piles of McDonald’s wrappers, just thrown out the
window as we go driving down the road.”

That's how I feel about noise pollution _inside_ the office.

------
anotheryou
As long as there is open offices there is a easy fix to lower pollution to 20%
by doing home-office.

~~~
tty2300
I used to think my office was quiet until I got noise cancelling headphones.
Now every time I take them off I am hit with a deafening ambiant noise which I
think is a combination of the fans in peoples computers and the sound of cars
making it through the building walls.

~~~
lupire
White noise is a good way to filter out spectral peaks that are more
disturbing.

~~~
frosted-flakes
I prefer a pink noise myself.

[https://mynoise.net](https://mynoise.net) is great for this. There are loads
of sound generators for different environments, each of which has sliders for
each frequency. I sometimes use it when I have trouble falling asleep (I pin
the site to my homepage on Android Chrome).

~~~
jdnier
Thanks. An interesting one: "Neuromodulator • A sound designed to squash down
your tinnitus"

------
baron816
Air pollution is still the next big public-health crisis. 4.2 million people
die each year from air pollution
[https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/](https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/).

------
atomical
I didn't realize it when signing but the apartment I'm staying in through
Bungalow is under a flight path.

There is a curfew for flights at night but that only covers departures.
Airplanes can still land at any hour.

It's a slow torture. I can't wait to leave San Diego.

~~~
shados
I did a ton of research when I got my place, about the area and all its quirk.
It was fine. I bought it, then 2 years later a nearby airport changed their
software which modified some flight routes, and more importantly lowered the
altitude planes flew over extremely densely populated areas, making them
incredibly noisy. All this happened in the name of saving fuel.

Now I haven't opened the windows in years, especially not at night (else its
impossible to sleep), the outdoor deck is unusable except for days where
planes don't actually fly over because of wind direction, etc. Starting to
plan selling the place partly because of it. Fortunately a lot of people swear
until they're blue in the face that this isn't happening (even though its easy
to find proof), so resell value isn't affected.

~~~
briandear
I live on Moffett Field and the noise from the 101 is deafening and the
occasional noise from a C-130 isn’t even noticeable. Freeway noise is far more
disruptive than almost airplanes.

~~~
80mph
Hearing that (no pun intended) doesn't give me hope for the new Moffett
housing development, which I believe, would be even closer to 101 than Wescoat
Village.

[https://mv-voice.com/news/2018/06/01/nasa-picks-partner-for-...](https://mv-
voice.com/news/2018/06/01/nasa-picks-partner-for-huge-moffett-housing-
development)

------
musicale
Constant sirens from emergency vehicles seem to be about as useful as car
alarms.

Except in urban environments the sirens are 24/7, reverberate for blocks, and
are extremely hard to localize until the vehicle is right next to you and
blaring at 120dB.

It's like someone constantly yelling "hey, there's an emergency somewhere!"

------
Creationer
The technology is ready - EVs - but the ramp up is taking too long. States and
cities need to ban the sale of new non-hybrid ICE vehicles starting now -
there are already options at all price points.

~~~
twblalock
> there are already options at all price points

Not even close. There are a lot of people who cannot afford EVs. There are a
bunch of people who cannot afford a new car at any price. Most of the people
you see on the road driving 20-year-old cars are not doing it by choice.

There are also a lot of people who could afford an EV but do not have a place
to charge one, because they live in an apartment complex without chargers or
need to use street parking. No, charging your car at work is not a good
solution because there would not be enough chargers if everyone had to drive
EVs.

The burden of banning internal-combustion vehicles would disproportionately
fall upon renters and the poor, who are also the people most affected by noise
pollution.

~~~
Creationer
Its time to buck up and make some sacrifices for the sake of our health and
our planet. All of these problems can be overcome with a little bit of effort.
Are we that collectively lazy?

------
b_tterc_p
First half of the article felt more likely to be a modern risk due to earbuds.
Actual ambient noise pollution might be a problem, but I doubt it. I don’t see
how such studies could adequately control for air pollution. On a related
note, this quote from the article didn’t make any sense to me:

> ‘If you could eliminate all motor-vehicle noise or all motor-vehicle air
> pollution—but not both—which would you choose?’ As a rule, the majority
> chose noise.”

~~~
atomical
Noise is the obvious answer if the respondents are in a city with a low AQI
number.

It can be hard to breathe in large cities in India and China.

------
musicale
Low-frequency rumbling noise is particularly horrible. You can hear it from
miles away. It seems almost inescapable in and near cities.

------
purplezooey
Harleys with no muffler. They need to be banned.

------
wiggler00m
Earplugs solve this for most locations.

~~~
majos
For a little while. But earplugs are not comfortable for hours of use, and
they can cause tinnitus-type effects if you do that.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
I've worn earplugs and put a big fan next to my head every night for years,
because I'm a very light sleeper. I don't get any kind of irritation from it.

I think the big thing is people don't know how to put earplugs in properly,
the entire plug should be in your ear canal. To do it, you need to pull up
from the top of your ear when inserting to fully seat it.

~~~
instantwhat
No, the big things are varying ear canal sizes and shapes, varying earplug
sizes and shapes, and side sleepers.

Put an earplug in your ear that seals the ear canal, then press firmly on the
outside of your ear canal (on the side of your head, in front of the tragus).
Feel that pressure. Now imagine doing that for 8 hours a night.

I have had to sleep with ear plugs because of noise from neighbors. Two
results: waking up with painful ear canals during the night, and semi-
permanently enlarged ear canals, requiring the use of larger ear plugs to
seal, which causes more pain.

If you can comfortably sleep with ear plugs with no adverse effects, you are
lucky.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
The way I put them in, there's no pressure pushing on them through the night
since they're so far in. And I'm a side sleeper, too.

~~~
instantwhat
I think you're one of the lucky ones, then, that the anatomy of your ear canal
allows the earplug to seal the passage without the pillow putting pressure on
it.

What almost works for me is using two differently sized earplugs and putting
the smaller one in the pillow-side ear, because the pillow pushing on the ear
canal causes it to seal despite the smaller plug. But when I roll onto my
other side several times a night, I'd have to wake up and swap ear plugs. It's
not feasible. :(

------
maximus1983
I used to live near a train track. When I first moved there it bothered me
quite a lot. When I moved out it was more like "what trains"?

~~~
Sharlin
Somehow it's easier to get used to train noise than automobile noise. I'm not
sure why.

