Noise Pollution and Your Well Being

The not desired sound outside will stress, stress causes disease. Disease kills us.

He’s only come to dread the sound. He’s imagined himself running down the stairs as soon as he hears the beeping and having a conversation with the truck driver as soon they step down from their gigantic cab. However, he always changed his mind because they’re just performing their jobs and a good job at that and, it’s not their fault.

He’s even tried walking the two city blocks to the jogging path right next to the glistening Lake Michigan to do his yoga and that also proved fruitless. Because every few minutes he hears the roaring engine of an airplane taking off or landing at one of the worlds busy and getting busier airports.

Sure, it’d be easy to blame owners of these companies – it must be them that carry the burden of guilt. We could just blame the big industries concerned about money and not social responsibility, but it’s a cultural thing, so we can’t, we’re all in this together.

For him, noise pollution takes its toll, he wonders about his neighbors.

But, he thinks, what about the many squirrels, birds, butterflies, rabbits, cats and dogs that also share the immediate surroundings as their home? What’s the outcome of harmful noise with those beings?

The cement square beneath his windows is a metaphor for life right now because in the meantime, the welfare of nature in this area has been ignored.

Because of the increasing mass urbanization, the world is hearing more harmful noise.

Noise is measured in decibel units; there are present noise decibel laws but if you go around your neighborhood with a decibel reader that you can buy at Radio Shack, it’s obvious that we’re constantly breaking these laws and nobody seems to care.

We hear the rapid expansion of O’Hare Airport day and night. Due to lax laws initiated by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, O’Hare is expected to triple the number of loud engines, in the next ten years taking off from what is currently allowed, hundreds of planes an hour, hundreds. Hey, it’s getting worse, more runways. Quieter aircraft are being created but aircraft is increasing at such a rate that noise pollution will increase even with the expanding roaring of planes.

He’s seen many people moving in and out from his studio windows. He laughs to himself and thinks the condo owners probably have their prospective buyers stay over on Saturday night so they won’t have to listen to the “Beep!” until Monday. Do people talk about it as noise pollution? Are we so used to it we don’t really notice?

Often we turn on a different noise in our home to hide the problem our world faces outside. Sometimes that doesn’t even work because the vibration felt by the human body is omnipresent.

Peace and quiet has become unmanageable. And with the movements towards urbanization, we’re facing consequences. Let’s be aware of noise pollution and begin to enforce the laws.