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NOISE: THE NOISY KILLER
Dr. Dhiraj Nanda
Today's life is full of tension. Everyone is tense.
Children, adults, rich, poor, men, women everyone often
complaints of tension. Sixty plus generation often
wonders when their eight-ten year old grandchild
complaints that there is so much tension in his life.
The members of sixty plus older generation, recalling
their childhood days which used to be free from tension,
fail to understand why and how there is tension in the
lives of their little grandchildren. In fact, fast speed
of life in metro cities is blamed for this rise in
tension. A major contributor to tension today is noise
pollution which affects everyone from children to the
aged. But surprising all most everyone tends to neglect
its effect. In fact, hardly anyone gives a serious
thought to the fact that noise pollution is causing a
variety of socio-psychological problems.
Noise pollution is unwanted sound which is dumped into
the atmosphere notwithstanding the adverse effects it
may have on living and nonliving things .In cities, 60
to 70 % of noise may come from road traffic. This is
further deteriorated by the fact that in most of Indian
cities road lengths are much less than the desired. Road
lengths in Indian cities are about 7% of total area
instead of desired 20-30%.
In early 20th century, German nobellaurate Robert Pock,
predicted that a time will come when man shall die due
to sheer noise and today noise is being used as third
degree measure for interrogation. Like hypertension is
called silent killer, the author prefers to call noise
pollution as the noisy killer. Adverse effects of noise
pollution on human health are manifold. An adverse
impact of noise on health is tension. Noise also
multiplies the effect of other factors which cause
tension. Now let us see how noise pollution affects the
mental health of man. Patients exposed to high levels of
noise manifest a variety of symptoms. Some of these are:
1. Anxiety - Anxiety level in our society has been
increasing in proportion to the increase in the noise
pollution levels. It is a very common experience that
when one is anxious, calm and quiet environment tends to
decrease the level of anxiety.
2. Annoyance- People who are exposed continuously to
noise levels of 20-50 dB get annoyed easily when
compared to those who are not exposed noise constantly.
Patients residing in the noisy areas of cities have
higher degree of annoyance in comparison to patients who
live in suburban area.
3. Decrease in self-confidence -One of the most complex
psychological adverse effects of noise pollution is
decrease in self-confidence level. Generally, children
from school which are located near main road exposed to
high levels of both air and noise pollution may have a
higher blood pressure level and a lower level of
self-confidence in comparison to children whose school
are situated in pollution free zones. Noise acts as
constant detraction and thus, decreasing attention and
concentration levels which in turn affects memory. The
end result of this process is decrease in
self-confidence levels.
4. Lowered performance - Noise acts as source of
distraction which directly affects the performance
level. Noise directly as well as indirectly decreases
self-confidence level which also affects the performance
level.
5. Nervous irritability -Patients who come from
environments which are constantly exposed to high levels
of noise get irritated easily. An important point to
note is that many times patients whose houses are in
high noise pollution zones complaint that their
irritability is better when they are at office.
Similarly, a patient whose offices are in high noise
zones may not be as irritable at his home as he is in
his office.
6. Poor attention and concentration - It has been
already written above that noise acts as a source of
distraction decreasing in the levels of attention and
concentration.
7. Stress - Stress is natural out come of all the above
stated effects of noise on the mind of a healthy human
being. And this stress further causes many
psychological, physiological and social problems.
Prominent among physiological effects of noise pollution
are problems like hypertension, heart attacks which are
increasingly becoming cause of deaths in modern city
life.
8. Aggressive social behaviour and relations:-In the
present times there is more aggression in society when
compared to the times of a decade or two earlier. Noise
pollution has contributed significantly to this increase
in aggressive social behaviour and relations of the
present day society. As explained earlier, different
types of adverse effects of noise pollution on metal
sphere result in stress. This stress is released most
often in varying forms of aggressive behaviour.
9. Noise levels are directly related to road
accidents:-Higher the noise levels, higher the incidence
of road accidents.
The above mentioned adverse effects get modified under
the influence of other related factors in various
circumstances. The question is how to minimize the
effects of noise pollution. One cannot go to forests to
escape from noise pollution. One important line of
action is minimizing the exposure to unwanted noise.
Listening to music also has soothing effect but not for
everyone as not everyone is benefited by music. The most
important remedy to minimize the effects of noise
pollution is a simple type of meditation. One should
meditate in quite, dark but airy environment. |
