Noise: the new menace

by Lucy Kavaler

206 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[P.J. Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not enough attention is paid to the effects of noise. We are expected to ignore it or "tune it out." People who complain are called cranks. An "attitude adjustment" is called for. But noise is stress and, as Dr. Hans Selye demonstrated, adaptation to stress can protect us only so far, then disease results. Noise is pollution. Are asthmatics cranks when they complain about air pollution that may endanger their lives? People have different pain threshholds. Even Benjamin Franklin complained about noise.

The author discusses the effects of noise on plants and animals, some of which can be killed by loud noises. If plants and animals with little or no cognitive abilities can be killed by noise, then surely cognition is not the problem. Attitude is not the problem. Something else is going on here, something real. She compares the cardiovascular health of primitive people who live in the bush with those same people after they move to noisy towns and cities, and makes a compelling case that noise is much more than a minor inconvenience.

She cites a study at the University of Tennessee that showed up to 60% of college freshmen already have some hearing loss. Is this to be considered normal? It is not normal among Mabaam tribesmen of the Sudan, who live in the bush. Doesn't this prove that modern life is too loud? Isn't it time we took noise abatement seriously?

[Ross Heinricy]

this book felt like an agenda looking for evidence to support it. the premise in and of itself has value, but the author tried too hard to make her case. in lieu of the evidence she did present and how she presented it there is validity in the cause, but not enough to justify outlawing sound itself.