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The Nuance
Noise Pollution Is a Thing, and It’s Making You Sick
Peace and quiet is a powerful health hack
Every week, the Nuance will go beyond the basics, offering a deep and researched look at the latest science and expert insights on a buzzed-about health topic.
Back in 1896, a journal article titled “The Plague of City Noises” set off the 19th century’s version of a Twitter meltdown. The article highlighted “the injurious and exhausting effects of city noises on the auditory apparatus, and on the whole nervous system,” and generated “hundreds” of editorial comments and “scores” of private letters across the United States and Europe.
“Almost without exception… the medical press agreed with the contention that the noises of our modern cities are not only a source of great discomfort, but are largely life-shortening and health-wrecking in their effects,” the author of an article on the phenomenon wrote the following year.
Fast-forward to 2011, and a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) came to similar conclusions. The authors concluded that in western Europe alone, roughly 1 million healthy life years are lost each year as a result of traffic-related noise. Noise is inherently arousing, and the long-term effects of “chronic noise stress” on the human hormone and nervous systems are a growing concern, the report states.
Just as the human digestive system can be overwhelmed by the sugar and calories packed into contemporary diets, noise pollution experts say the human brain and nervous system can be overwhelmed by the amount of ambient noise packed into contemporary life.
“You can close your eyes, but you cannot close your ears.”
“The auditory system is continuously analyzing acoustic information, including unwanted and disturbing sound, which is filtered and interpreted by different brain structures,” says Wolfgang Babisch, a former research scientist with Germany’s Federal Environment Agency who has studied the effects of noise on human health and authored a chapter of the WHO report.
Our brain’s always-on auditory system was designed to operate in natural environments — not in cacophonous cities and…
