Patrick
I have a lot of personal investment here; the ideas presented in this book are ones that I've been in agreement with for years, namely, that noise pollution (especially at night) is on the rise, and that preventing hearing loss suffers from a societal lack of awareness, regulation, and incentive. I think there's a general idea that this falls into common sense, but I'd argue that awareness of noise pollution and hearing damage is scant.
I assert that:
- People don't take hearing loss seriously - and thus do not take hearing protection seriously either. The lack of earplugs or even consideration of them at concerts, mowing the lawn, industrial environments, etc. I have personally experienced the following mindsets in my personal life:
Friends who don't think you need hearing protection shooting outdoors as long as "it's just a .22."
Friends who don't wear earplugs at concerts because "Well my hearing's already shot."
Friends who don't wear hearing protection while mowing because "it's not that loud."
- The general sentiment of hearing loss is the idea of flat volume reduction, akin to aging, instead of more complex damage (that this book illustrates).
- The general misunderstanding of decibel volume as a linear scale, as opposed to logarithmic, and the reduction/halving of safe exposure time when volume increases.
- Reactive changes versus proactive changes in establishing standards that relate to noise (and enforcement and regulation.) Fundamental cultural shifts are needed to express that noise is not just a decibel reading, and that types of noise are just as important. The book refers to this as "cultivating better soundscapes" (L. 1887 ) and it's a major point in later chapters that noise control is not just about creating absolute quiet but crafting what sounds people do and don't want to hear and the appropriate situation to engage with them. The idea of "high sonic quality" as a more important factor for noise in human perception than flat volume is brought up many times in this book, based on survey data from a variety of populaces, environments, and situations.
---
It's very confusing to me that the general populace seems so unaware of noise, as the author describes, maybe they have better or worse filtering than I do (and I hope I have protected my hearing as much as possible), but the number of times I've had conversations with people explaining that night is simply "quieter" and them not understanding makes me think that there's some level of noise pollution that people other than me are better at blocking out on a regular basis.
---
There's also the elephant in the room, in my mind, for our United States readers: Automobiles.
The extreme noise of automobiles, and the consistency of its presence, is an ever-growing problem in our environment, especially as it relates to the lack of discrete noise regulation for neighborhoods that border busy streets, highways and roads. As outlined in Chapter 4, residents who live in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by industrial automobile traffic typically have very little recourse to solving that problem once it exists. There was a key takeaway point in this chapter that highlights that road effects are far harder to combat once they are established, especially if said road is primarily used for traffic supporting industry (because then you're fighting commercial interests to maintain that roadway and sunk cost of continuing to do business). Furthermore, this seems to be a common major disruption regardless of environment or income status, as outlined in Chapter 9 when the author highlights survey results showing vehicular noise being detrimental 55% of the time on surveys in various urban environments.
---
Other Interesting Parts:
- Medical - Very interesting: How noise interference creates slow reaction times to fatal mistakes and incidents in surgery, often leading to fatal or preventable outcomes. The sections on alarm fatigue and how to better design alarm sounds for hospitals was great.
- Open Office Plans: Shocking no one - open office plans harbor worse scores towards privacy and noise pollution for workers, and all scores from studies conclude that this harms collaboration much more than cubicles ever did. Once again, shocking absolutely no one that this concept conceived by cushy executives in their private offices unfettered by the noise of an open plan failed to provide the perceived collaborative benefits. The persistent problem of halfalogues noted in these relevant chapters are also a personal annoyance that I experienced working in an open-office environment, ultimately leading to everyone wearing noise-cancelling headphones throughout the work day.
Chapter 4: The Noise Gap - Sound Pollution and Environmental Justice
Really good chapter. The author is making a casual link between industry pollution, racism, city planning, automotive pollution, and invasive noise. It's a weak link, only in that the assertion that one follows the other is a given. The author has the right message, but any one of these is worth a deep dive into. The exposition around neighborhood redlining is informative and necessary, and the author does a great job of explaining how a 1930's decision continues to have lasting downstream effects.
Chapter 5: Sensory Smog - Nature is Listening
Probably my favorite chapter -- especially the parts about the work the NPS is doing to preserve soundscapes and measure noise pollution by humans on nature. I found the comparison to wildfire when evaluating seedling drop rate in forests from noise to be very interesting.
Chapter 6: Beyond Noise - A World of Unbounded Sound
Specifically, the section titled "Beeps, Bleeps, and Bubbles", which investigated the evaluation process for creating idling and movement noises for London's electric bus system (you can hear these noises and get a deeper dive from this video: https://youtu.be/xINOfbdY8-g?si=Gtgc_xoCY6FHxdqK)
I have a lot of personal investment here; the ideas presented in this book are ones that I've been in agreement with for years, namely, that noise pollution (especially at night) is on the rise, and that preventing hearing loss suffers from a societal lack of awareness, regulation, and incentive. I think there's a general idea that this falls into common sense, but I'd argue that awareness of noise pollution and hearing damage is scant.
I assert that:
- People don't take hearing loss seriously - and thus do not take hearing protection seriously either. The lack of earplugs or even consideration of them at concerts, mowing the lawn, industrial environments, etc. I have personally experienced the following mindsets in my personal life:
Friends who don't think you need hearing protection shooting outdoors as long as "it's just a .22."
Friends who don't wear earplugs at concerts because "Well my hearing's already shot."
Friends who don't wear hearing protection while mowing because "it's not that loud."
- The general sentiment of hearing loss is the idea of flat volume reduction, akin to aging, instead of more complex damage (that this book illustrates).
- The general misunderstanding of decibel volume as a linear scale, as opposed to logarithmic, and the reduction/halving of safe exposure time when volume increases.
- Reactive changes versus proactive changes in establishing standards that relate to noise (and enforcement and regulation.) Fundamental cultural shifts are needed to express that noise is not just a decibel reading, and that types of noise are just as important. The book refers to this as "cultivating better soundscapes" (L. 1887 ) and it's a major point in later chapters that noise control is not just about creating absolute quiet but crafting what sounds people do and don't want to hear and the appropriate situation to engage with them. The idea of "high sonic quality" as a more important factor for noise in human perception than flat volume is brought up many times in this book, based on survey data from a variety of populaces, environments, and situations.
---
It's very confusing to me that the general populace seems so unaware of noise, as the author describes, maybe they have better or worse filtering than I do (and I hope I have protected my hearing as much as possible), but the number of times I've had conversations with people explaining that night is simply "quieter" and them not understanding makes me think that there's some level of noise pollution that people other than me are better at blocking out on a regular basis.
---
There's also the elephant in the room, in my mind, for our United States readers: Automobiles.
The extreme noise of automobiles, and the consistency of its presence, is an ever-growing problem in our environment, especially as it relates to the lack of discrete noise regulation for neighborhoods that border busy streets, highways and roads. As outlined in Chapter 4, residents who live in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by industrial automobile traffic typically have very little recourse to solving that problem once it exists. There was a key takeaway point in this chapter that highlights that road effects are far harder to combat once they are established, especially if said road is primarily used for traffic supporting industry (because then you're fighting commercial interests to maintain that roadway and sunk cost of continuing to do business). Furthermore, this seems to be a common major disruption regardless of environment or income status, as outlined in Chapter 9 when the author highlights survey results showing vehicular noise being detrimental 55% of the time on surveys in various urban environments.
---
Other Interesting Parts:
- Medical - Very interesting: How noise interference creates slow reaction times to fatal mistakes and incidents in surgery, often leading to fatal or preventable outcomes. The sections on alarm fatigue and how to better design alarm sounds for hospitals was great.
- Open Office Plans: Shocking no one - open office plans harbor worse scores towards privacy and noise pollution for workers, and all scores from studies conclude that this harms collaboration much more than cubicles ever did. Once again, shocking absolutely no one that this concept conceived by cushy executives in their private offices unfettered by the noise of an open plan failed to provide the perceived collaborative benefits. The persistent problem of halfalogues noted in these relevant chapters are also a personal annoyance that I experienced working in an open-office environment, ultimately leading to everyone wearing noise-cancelling headphones throughout the work day.
Chapter 4: The Noise Gap - Sound Pollution and Environmental Justice
Really good chapter. The author is making a casual link between industry pollution, racism, city planning, automotive pollution, and invasive noise. It's a weak link, only in that the assertion that one follows the other is a given. The author has the right message, but any one of these is worth a deep dive into. The exposition around neighborhood redlining is informative and necessary, and the author does a great job of explaining how a 1930's decision continues to have lasting downstream effects.
Chapter 5: Sensory Smog - Nature is Listening
Probably my favorite chapter -- especially the parts about the work the NPS is doing to preserve soundscapes and measure noise pollution by humans on nature. I found the comparison to wildfire when evaluating seedling drop rate in forests from noise to be very interesting.
Chapter 6: Beyond Noise - A World of Unbounded Sound
Specifically, the section titled "Beeps, Bleeps, and Bubbles", which investigated the evaluation process for creating idling and movement noises for London's electric bus system (you can hear these noises and get a deeper dive from this video: https://youtu.be/xINOfbdY8-g?si=Gtgc_xoCY6FHxdqK)