Noise Pollution and Your Well Being

On Jeff’s blue Yoga mat, he inhaled through his nose, exhaled through his mouth, and welcomed the morning with bent legs underneath him and a straight back; he grabbed his ankles and held himself in the shape of a bow. Jeff was learning to develop a strong spine, as to handle any stressful situation in his life. Trying for his third deliberate breath he collapses his pose, “Beep!” “Beeeep,” “Beep,” “Beep!”

Jeff rises at 6am and hears this obviously blaring warning horn, Monday through Friday. For Jeff, that sound always seems unexpected. He questions why the limit to the city’s decibel law isn’t reinforced? Why aren’t there a driver, driving, and a cohort watching a highly evolved camera that the vast majority of big industries have? Whatever happened to the guys cocked to the side and hanging on to a steel bar from the back of garbage trucks, smiling at children, like in the day? Is this option too expensive for Jeff’s big city of Chicago?

Transportation vehicles are the worst offenders of noise pollution.

It’s 6:15am and the city garbage trucks are backing up. In reverse, the sound of the horn is heard on an average of 22 times, 5 days a week. The noise pollution problem is especially inauspicious for him and his neighbors; he shares his backyard with thousands of urban dwellers on an entire city block comprised of many buildings on Chicago’s lovely northeast side.

The word noise is derived from the Latin term for nausea, yes – nausea.

Jeff thinks about the sounds that he has no control over like: leaf blowers, car horns, car alarms, airplanes, motorcycles, construction trucks backing up and those reversing garbage trucks. Even though intuitively, he knows noise pollution isn’t good for anyone’s soul.

Everyone has a psyche that reacts to noise differently. We don’t see the harmful consequences because there is no immediate cause and effect. Therefore, noise tends to be viewed by many, not as an environmental problem but as a nuisance that we’re becoming used to.

Jeff questions, what are we really doing with environmental integrity? All of today’s environmental issues have a tremendous amount of value. A growing number of people also feel like we need to look at the meaning of this proliferating pollutant.

The definition of noise as a pollutant is subjective because of the gray area in which an individual considers a sound to be loud or not desired, not expected, not pleasant and/or not wanted. Noise pollution can be defined as something repeatedly heard or not by any person under any circumstance, which may compromise their mental and/or physical health.