Noise Pollution Is A Real Problem
The description of pollution has revolved around “pollution being any action, process or substance that deteriorates or cause harm to the environment and its inhabitants. ” As you know, noise is a loud and unpleasant sound. Despite this generally accepted meaning ascribed to pollution, you’ll observe noise as largely being ignored and is hardly recognized as pollution in most environments. This has raised the question – is noise pollution real?
Varying responses have popped up justifying noise as pollution and some others claiming noise to be a natural exhibit of a habited environment that must be endured. You’ll be shocked that most noise engineers rather consider noise has a form of energy rather than pollution. They claim noise being a “mechanical pollution” has a much shorter range of influence and should not be placed on same level with air pollution like CO and other gaseous toxic materials from industrial plants, water pollution like leached fertilizers and solid waste which create long lasting defects in the environment. Though, these engineers have largely agreed that noise might be considered as pollution if man induced. Claiming man induced noise adds to the natural background noise and could sometimes have negative effects on plant, animals, and humans and should be avoided. It’s quite understandable that man will go any length to defend his own, just like noise engineers have gone lengths to justify the presence of noise in our environment. But the question “is noise pollution real?” deserves a Yes or No answer and cannot be easily bought with beautifully arranged explanation. Should noise be considered a substance that deteriorates or cause harm to man or should be considered as a natural phenomena that can cause harm but shouldn’t be considered pollution? Off course, noise technologist might go with the latter and environmentalist with the former but let’s take a walk through noise as a whole to answer this question.
Major sources of noise pollution
Aside natural occurring sounds from mammals, singing birds, roaming insects, whispering winds and falling rains, man and his inventions have shown to be a major source of noise pollution which is sometimes detrimental to life. These sources can be broken into four major groups which include –
Household source: The household is usually considered as a factory of its own noise. You might have although thought of noise as loud sounds generated from large industries machineries and hardware but noise originates from our immediate surrounding also. Households are source of noises such as the banging of doors, washing machine, alarms, dryer, air conditioner, and vacuum cleaner, loud speakers, TV, neighbor’s dog and baby cries. You can now see that the noise you so much hate is also produced by you, to be hated by your neighbor.
Social events: religious organizations, parties, discos, market areas and gigs are frequent sources of noise pollution. You might fade off this as pollution and rather tag it has a source of nuisance to some, because, to some listening to the buzzing speakers from these functions they hear beautifully coordinated sounds while to passersby and people like myself trying to catch an afternoon sleep all hell has been let lose. Indians have shown to have a particular fetish for loud speakers and now need only the slightest of an excuse for using loud speakers. The reason may be a range of religious function, birth, death, marriage, elections, demonstration, or just commercial advertising. These have all shown to be major contributors of noise.
Transportation: while you’ll agree with me that technological improvement has contributed enormously to ease transportation it has also contributed negatively to environmental serenity. Just try living close to an airport or rail line. The noise and vibration emanating from these regions is tensing and provoking. This is why people avoid such areas. Automobile advancement in urban centers has shown to be major contributors of noise pollution. You must have witnessed impatient drivers cussing and cursing at the top of his voice while piercing the ears of other road users. All these, alongside the zooming of automobiles contribute largely to noise pollution. You’ll think automobile improvement will flow with production of automobiles that produce lesser noise but this isn’t the case as latest cars have shown to produce distinctive noise that signals it incoming before arrival, and people have funnily found this luxurious and exciting to patronize.
Industrial sources: likewise has in transportation sources, technological advancement has come with a whole lot of new source of noise especially in varying frightful sounds. Textile mills, rock blasting, metal works, printing presses, manufacturing industries, construction sites and mobile machines like; lawn mowers, tractors and noisy equipments. Usually noise in these locations are so high that workers around are made to wear noise-proof gadget compulsorily. This Is why most government try to plan their land geography in such a way that residential areas are far from industrial areas.
Effects of noise
One thing we all know is commonly related to noise is its ability to cause nuisance. This is why it is famously used as repellant. In man, noise is famously used in form of alarm to repel sleep, and to draw consciousness either as a red light (like during war, as horn in vehicles to alert road users) or as a green light (basically when car users with loud exhaust and sound system to feed their ego) and in insects and pest; regulated sound frequencies are used to chase them off because they find them annoying. Yet, noise goes beyond mere nuisance and could go as far as causing physical damage to the ear drum and the sensitive hair cells of inner ear which my result to temporary or permanent hearing loss. Other effect of persistent noise pollution includes
A. In man
- Attention disturbance: you’ll observe that at the noise of siren on the road or a sudden bang on the office desk by a co-worker your attention is diverted. Noise is such that it sends a stimuli that attracts the general senses of man.
- Headaches: noise being a source of headaches should be news to you. Persistent noise has shown to result to aches in the head. It’s one of the reason most phones gives warning when increasing volumes to the highest level with earpieces.
- Fatigue: noise reacts differently with people. Also different sounds could have different impacts on an individual. While a sound will keep you awake with aches another might just drain your whole energy and live you lifeless.
B. In animals
- Effects of noise pollution in animals are quiet similar in most cases. Most animals are more affected by noise intensities than man. This intolerance to noise in most animals have caused them migrate from noisy environments. This migration exposes them to predators and other threats which may in turn affect the balance of the ecosystem.
- In birds and some animals. Life patterns or you can call it animal culture has been altered as some birds and frogs that use their tiny sweet tones to attract opposite sex have shown to have increased the pitch of their call in other to beat the background noise so they can be heard by their potential mates. Most time the opposite sex prefers to be called with a lower pitch has they find this attractive because this pitches show or indicate larger and more experienced males.
C. In plants
- It has been proven that the noise in our environment have some effects on plants. These researches have shown that birds and other animals which have changed their behaviour due to manmade noise tend affect plant life in such societies in the long run. These effects might not be direct but influenced the productivity of plants life. While birds effective for their pollination and waste drops which serves as manure avoided noisy environment. Plants are left unavailable with an external factor that aid their productivity which might result to diminishing is such a plants access to quality life. Noise has shown to have a ripple effect on plants.
Noise as an accepted or a rejected sound
Some group have said, human believe sound to be noise by their conception and thought about a particular sound or action. They claim noise can be more psychological than physical. You might want to agree with this because a genre of music might be pollution to me because I dislike such genres but might be good music to you because it’s your kind of song. This is why while some songs serve as alert to some because of their annoying nature it sounds as a sweet dose of sleeping medicine to others. Despite this agreeable account to noise, we can’t rule out that some noise are always just annoying especially when loud no matter what and will imply damage to one; either physical, mental or psychological. Sounds like those produced from an electric drill, a passing plane, a baby cry, loud chewing and fingers down a chalkboard have generally shown to be very annoying.
Conclusion
While natural sounds have no adverse effects other than nuisance man made noise should be monitored and observed closely so as not to graduate into a pollution causing harm silently within the body organs. The question “is noise pollution real?” can definitely be concluded with a yes as its answer.
