Have We Got Used To Being Disturbed?

The bed is slightly vibrating, and your common sense is telling you that it is just an illusion – the indistinct reverberations of imaginative dreams.

Then, an extraordinarily loud noise comes from the outside and your first morning gaze falls on a closed window in surprise. It is 7AM and you realise that it is not a dream, nor an earthquake. The sound is produced by a massive hydraulic rotary drill rig, used for drilling boreholes with long hollow stem augers. When did we start to consider noise for a usual part of our daily lives?

“No person should be exposed to noise levels which endanger health and quality of life.”

This objective was declared by European Commission in 1993. Twenty years later, the European Environment Agency published its first noise assessment report. According to the document, environmental noise exposure causes at least 10 000 cases of premature death and over 900 000 cases of hypertension in Europe each year. It also makes around 20 million adults annoyed and a further 8 million suffer from sleep disturbance.

Environmental noise can be defined as noise that is emitted by all sources, but noise in the industrial workplace. The Environmental Noise Directive (END) describes it as an unwanted or harmful outdoor sound created by human activities.

The exposure to high noise levels (above 55 dB L_den and 50 dB L_night) has a big impact on our health. In 2018, WHO released Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region in which it states that the noise is “one of the top environmental hazards to both physical and mental health and well-being”. Exposure to loud noise is one of the factors across the life span that can cause hearing loss and even deafness. According to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), there are 12 million adults with hearing loss greater than 25 dB HL (decibels Hearing Level) in the UK. This number is estimated to rise to around 14.2 million by 2035.

What is hearing loss?

Our ears receive a sound through a passage called the ear canal which leads to the eardrum, also called the tympanic membrane. This thin membrane ensures a transmission of the received sound in the form of vibrations onwards to the three bones in the middle ear. When we are exposed to the very intense sound pressure, the eardrum vibrates accordingly and it can eventually rupture or even rip up. This is called hearing loss; however, there are many more causes of hearing loss than simply exposure to loud noise. The inability to hear can be very individualistic, since it can occur at birth or at any time afterwards and the person can experience hearing loss in one or both ears.

Because sound has its measuring units, it is also possible to measure how large and serious the person’s hearing loss is. The units are called decibels (dB). The WHO states that people with normal hearing have thresholds of 20 dB or better in both ears. When a person experiences hearing loss greater than 35 dB in the better hearing ear, the WHO refers to this as “disabling” hearing loss.

Although hearing loss and deafness are serious health issues, it represents only one part of a bulk of noise exposure impacts on our lives. There have been several adverse health impacts linked to persistent and high levels of noise. Among those, stress and sleep-stage changes have a significant place. These may lead to health issues like blood pressure problems, and also may develop into insomnia or cardiovascular diseases.

When members of the public were asked whether they have problems with noise in their neighbourhood, the majority (74%) answered they have none. Only 4% of people admitted they have major problems when it comes to assessing noise. It is even more concerning when data shows people don’t mind and are possibly not aware of the problem. Many years have passed since EC’s declaration in 1993 and since the UK ranks above the average in most of the life-quality topics, environmental noise seems to be ”unheard”.

Sara Davidkova

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Featured image courtesy of @chairulfajar on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.