this unexpressed emotion is an epidemic of stressrelated illness that refl ects a struggle to adapt to the speed and sustained arousal of city life.’ In their book The Human Jungle (Ebury Press, 1996), Stanton Newman and Susan Lonsdale suggest that, in fact, ‘life’ has become associated with noise and continuous activity, while quiet (where we might learn to appreciate natural soundscapes) has become associated with boredom, lassitude, lack of choice and, more worryingly, the fear of being out of touch with what the ‘new new thing’ is. If this wasn’t already a damning indictment of our social malaise, acoustic ecologists say that, unlike New Guinea tribesmen, who can recognise the calls of over a hundred different birds, our inability to appreciate more subtle sounds means that, if we’ve never had direct experience of a particular bird’s song, we won’t mind if it becomes extinct. Does this also mean that if we are unable to listen to the needs of others, we won’t care if they remain unfulfi lled? This may make for depressing reading: we are always on, comfortably numb by degree, deaf to our own feelings and those of others. At best, the only time for refl ection in our lives is the minute’s silence we might observe after a natural or manmade disaster. Certainly, the extraordinary level of awareness of blind people – many of whom can tell the gender of someone walking into a room by their footsteps – reveals just how underused our hearing ability is. We think nothing of visiting the optician to have our eyes tested, but who takes care of their hearing in the same way? And yet, our intolerance to the need of people to let off steam and have fun, arguably caused by the same insularity, has also resulted in bizarre solutions that leave the individual even further dislocated from the whole. In response to strict early-morning noise restrictions enforced by the local council, Private Dance Parties equipped 1,000 Glastonbury Festival-goers with 1000 pairs of wireless headphones so they could go ‘crazy-ape’ without disturbing the neighbours. DJs added audience noise into the mix, so dancers could enjoy the atmosphere of being part of a festival of thousands. Quite. The notion that you can be individually part of a whole, but not experience the noise that the whole makes, is a recipe for insanity. One punter said it was like showering in a raincoat. What we need is balance and, although acoustic ecology’s tone is anti-industrial – Murray Schafer has been known to not even have a fridge because of the hum – the supposition that preserving meaningful soundscapes can help improve social cohesion has merit. And the

NOISE POLLUTION

NOISE AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: Trying to hear themselves think Over 2,800 children, aged 9–10 years, from 89 primary schools located near

three major airports – Schiphol in the Netherlands, Barajas in Spain and

Heathrow in the UK – took part in the RANCH study (Road traffi c and Aircraft

Noise exposure, Children’s Cognition and Health), headed by Professor Stephen

Stansfeld of Queen Mary, University of London, and recently published in The

Lancet. On pooling the data from the three countries, the researchers found

that exposure to aircraft noise impaired reading comprehension – even after

adjusting for socioeconomic differences between high-noise and low-noise

schools.

Reading age in children exposed to high levels of aircraft noise was delayed

by up to two months in the UK, and by up to one month in the Netherlands, for

each fi ve-decibel change in noise exposure.

A round-up of other airport research worldwide

■ Los Angeles, 1980. Sheldon Cohen et al. examined the impact of aircraft

noise on children’s health, and found higher blood pressure in those living near

the airport than in those living further away; also, children attending school

near the airport had more diffi culty solving cognitive problems.

■ New York, 1982. K.B. Green et al. found that airport noise lowered the

reading ability of school-aged children in the city.

■ Munich, 1995. Dr Gary Evans et al. found a relationship between chronic

noise exposure and raised neuroendocrine and cardiovascular measures for

children living near the International Airport.

■ New York, 1997. Dr Evans et al. also reported that New York children living

near an international airport tended to be poor listeners and did not read as

well as matched children in quiet schools.

■ Munich, 2002. Dr Evans et al. took advantage of a switch in Munich airports

to conduct the fi rst before-and-after study into the effects of airport noise on

cognitive development. At the end of 24 months, long-term memory, reading

and speech perception had been impaired in the children newly exposed to

noise near the new airport.

Furthermore, the reading and memory defi cits in this group were even

more pronounced 18 months after the opening of the new airport than after

six months, suggesting a cumulative effect. The reading and long-term memory

of the children living near the old airport site improved, although their speech

perception defi cits did not recover.

THE ECOLOGIST 045
NOISE POLLUTION

Restoring natural soundscapes would provide the necessary spaces in our acoustic environment that are required to bring some rhythm into our lives

HAS SOCIETY GOT LOUDER? According to MORI, 10 per

cent of the population has

complained about noise at

some time. Rachel McCormick,

an environmental health

practitioner with Leeds

Borough Council, says that,

sadly, neighbours will even

use noise to deliberately wind

each other up, sometimes

with dire consequences. A

Middlesborough man was

recently convicted of murdering

his neighbour with a knife

following a DIY noise dispute.

This is not an uncommon

occurrence.

A growing body of research indicates that noise is increasing and becoming

harder to contain. For example, with the increase in inner-city living and

the growing market for late-night entertainment, a Hallam University study

showed that some areas of Sheffi eld are 10 times louder than a decade ago.

According to the World Health Organization, more than a third of Europeans

experience levels of noise that disturb their sleep. According to the Council for

the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), our urban sprawl continues to cause

the diminution of ‘tranquil’ areas, by at least 20 per cent since 1960.

Noise from transport adds to the hubbub. Cars may be quieter today, but

there are more of them and more roads – the annual budget in the UK for

new roads is in excess of £20 billion. Moreover, 90 per cent of goods are

transported by road in the UK.

In the home, Dr Michael Bull says that the new technologies of sound – like

home hi-fi and digital surround-sound TVs – give us as much sound as we

want. ‘But,’ he says, ‘domestic architecture has not caught up with this

acoustic explosion. As our living spaces become smaller and fl imsier,

we make more noise.’ The UK Noise Association (UKNA) estimates that some

2.5 million people live in so-called ‘acoustic slums’ – homes with poor sound

insulation – where even acceptable noise levels can be amplifi ed by the

structure of the building.

Noise is often referred to as the forgotten pollutant. Campaigners say that if

it was oil in the water, or a pernicious smell in the air, it would be dealt with

immediately. But, like a Will o’ the Wisp, it doesn’t linger in the air like carbon

dioxide, making it easier to ignore.

suggestion that all we need to do to solve our collective malaise is turn the volume down a little and listen to natural sounds doesn’t necessarily mean we need to quiet down the buzz of the city either. It is more a case of reducing the relentless blanketing lo-fi hum – in particular, ambient traffi c noise – that prevents us from enjoying the variety of natural sounds on offer. In his Ambient Noise Strategy programme for the capital, Mayor Ken Livingstone says: ‘Our soundscape needs as much attention as our landscape or townscape. Reducing [traffi c] noise can allow people to hear more of the sounds they enjoy, whether that is gulls over water, wind in trees, or the bustle of an open market. Since the remodelling of Trafalgar Square, people have remarked that they can hear the fountains from the gallery steps for the fi rst time.’ Last year, the citizens of Stockholm were given a chance to vote for their favourite ‘sound sanctuaries’ – places of quiet and refl ection, or of acoustic interest – in their busy metropolis. Good examples of greater acoustic responsibility from businesses within the community are the exception, not the rule. At Tarmac’s plant in Arundel, the gentle whooshing sound of Brigade’s bbs-tek broadband backalarm, has brought peace to its neighbours, who were previously blighted by the intense single frequency of multiple reversing alarms. With zero complaints even from employees, broadband backalarms are now a company-wide policy. Indeed, other companies cannot deliver to the site unless they have one, too. There is, however, an emerging trend that demands greater quiet in our lives, so-called ‘acoustic comfort’, suggesting that we instinctively know there are limits to how much stimulation we can endure. In The Quiet Pint Guide (1000 pubs without background music), tranquility lovers will fi nd the perfect antidote to 24-hour licensing. Hush Technologies claim they apply the ‘science of silence’ to their range of ergonomically designed, silent, computing solutions and, on the road, Intelligent Energy’s hydrogen-powered motorbike makes almost no noise whatsoever. But it is in education that real changes can be made. In her latest book, Listen to the Raindrops, Arline Bronzaft, one of the world’s leading experts on noise, introduces the wonder of natural sounds to very young children. Through a simple poem, accompanied by illustrations of a family of mice, children are introduced to the need to protect their hearing by drawing their awareness to the joy of natural sounds, and the danger of the ones that can hurt their ears such as road drills, horns, sirens and boom cars.

046 THE ECOLOGIST