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Noise pollution hurts the heart

theatlantic.com

211–220 of 286 posts

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#211
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> folks prefer them to be loud so that they can be better noticed by cars and get hit less often If you want to do something that’s too dangerous to do without infuriating everyone around you, maybe you just shouldn’t do it. I don’t think those super loud exhausts are stock either. There are tons of bikers who replace the stock pipes with the loudest ones they can find. I don’t get it at all.

Motorcycles reduce congestion and emit less carbon emissions than SUVs, sedans, trucks, etc. Sure, loud exhausts shouldn't be used, but banning them without addressing the problem of incompetent drivers only further encourages a bygone car culture that is already arguably too pervasive in our society. As a side note, this line of thinking "[it infuriates others so] maybe you shouldn't do it" leans totalitarian which…

>emit less carbon emissions than SUVs, sedans, trucks, etc.

Citation needed. I'd be willing to bet money that a honda civic has fewer emissions than a harley.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#212
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have to fight an asshole like an asshole - few people are able to pull this off. most people prefer to suffer and pretend to themselves to be "tolerant" instead of just standing up for themselves.

Then you just end up with a world full of assholes. Not sure that's "winning".

I was half waiting for this response. I don't think so. There is a difference between being an asshole who abuses and harasses other people and being a person who is respectful but able to improvise guerilla tactics when it comes to dealing with such people. There IS a difference between using violence for offense and for defense.

You have to realize that no law, no police will protect you against people who have no consideration for their fellow citizens. There is only suffering, fleeing or fighting back - that's it. Make your choice.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#213
post #11

I used to live in a flat with a window onto the main road and I would violently wake up 4-6x every night and my heart rate would be through the roof. It's not easy to go back to sleep after that. I can get used to consistent noise and filter it out, but I can never get used to an extremely loud noise coming rapidly out of dead silence. Those were mostly custom exhausts, motorcycles and sirens. If I really needed slee…

I'm sorry you went through that awful situation but... was there anything stopping you from wearing earplugs? I religiously wear the best earplugs and face mask I can find to sleep. Even in controlled environments, they make a hell of a difference.

When I lived on a similar main road, I ended up with some form of noise turned up as loud as possible (to attempt to mute sirens), and I wore ear plugs to minimise that, and I still occasionally got woken up by the vibration of a large or loud vehicle passing by.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#214

I lived in NY for 3 months and the amount of noise pollution there was insane. The one that I really couldn't believe was the J train on Brooklyn's Broadway. You could be yelling at someone 3ft/1m apart and they couldn't hear you because of the train noise. I wonder if New Yorkers realise how absolutely crazy that is.

As someone who lives in NY for 10 years, I don't know how I wasn't so aware before but I've lately become acutely conscious of how we are surrounded by near constant extreme noise pollution levels. Maybe most people just exist in this the way I used to, not thinking about it, it's so normalised that people can't imagine how it could be any different. The worst to me is that people have internalised this so far that t…

I lived in NY for about 4 years, and I'm still amazed by the similar things I saw. For example, one day my upstairs neighbour didn't feel like pulling up the drive way, so she just parked her car in the middle of our cramped, busy one way street so she could run upstairs and grab some things.

Of course all the people stuck trying to drive down the street started honking and yelling. She got back to the car, yelled back at them and drove off.

I wouldn't consider doing something like that in a million years, but for native New Yorkers, it's par for the course.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#215
post #40

A bit unrelated, but I'd love to use a Zillow-like platform but filtering homes for noise pollution, light pollution, air pollution. (Also climate and flooding.) Most people wouldn't use it, because they've basically decided which city/town (bc of work/family) and are just trying to narrow down which home. But it'd be very useful to me, personally, as someone who can do my job from anywhere. Also, I'd imagine it's im…

I've thought about how one would design and market soundproofed apartments and houses. You'd need to condense full-spectrum measurements of ambient levels, indoor transmission, and outdoor transmission into just one or a few numbers or letter grades, and convince other apartment buildings and homebuilders to let you run measuring microphones and speakers for a week. Are there any standards for soundproofed constructi…

I'm not sure how soundproof it needs to be but my Marine Corps barracks never had sounds come through the ceilings or walls. Concrete.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#216

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled. Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

I have this wild pet idea that we should be have a meter connected to a car's horn and at the end of the year you have to pay a bill for the amount you used. Something like $0.10 / second. You'll still honk when you need to but think twice before using it to annoy other drivers.

> Something like $0.10 / second

This is a low enough cost that I bet people would use and hold their horn for longer, to show their annoyance in $.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#217

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled. Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

This was interesting for me, too. At the end of 2017 I moved into a new apartment, with a great view on a very busy road. I immediately felt much more "off". Maybe stressed in a way, but since I'm not usually the stressed kind, I had a hard time identifying the feeling. At around the same time, the AC in the office developed a constant hum. This drove me nuts. When I went to my parents' house in the suburbs, I could…

Ear plugs are and one of the greatest inventions of humanity :-)

No joking: I use to work, sleep, public transport, and every time I want some piece of mind.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was interesting for me, too. At the end of 2017 I moved into a new apartment, with a great view on a very busy road. I immediately felt much more "off". Maybe stressed in a way, but since I'm not usually the stressed kind, I had a hard time identifying the feeling. At around the same time, the AC in the office developed a constant hum. This drove me nuts. When I went to my parents' house in the suburbs, I could…

It was a culture shock for me as a Californian to visit Tokyo. In my mind cities are dirty, loud, and dangerous. Tokyo despite being one of the densest and busiest cities in first world countries is incredibly clean, quiet, and safe.

Can you say a little bit more about this? What's the difference in how the cities are structured that makes this so?

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_transmission_class

Cool! Though unfortunately it only goes down to 125Hz or so, so it won't cover water hammer pipe noise, flushing toilets, or footsteps on higher floors. > The STC is useful for evaluating annoyance due to speech sounds, but not music or machinery noise as these sources contain more low frequency energy than speech. There's also Room Criteria or Noise Criteria, which measures ambient noise from 16Hz to 4kHz, but not t…

STC rating, or as you point out maybe a more expansive take on noise attenuation, is going to be high on my requirements list next time I look at an apartment. I think that and general sanitation (i.e lack of rats, roaches, bedbugs, mold) are the things that have the most acute effect on livability. And not having to walk on tiptoes is nice too. Unfortunately new construction is all about making a building cheaply, but soundproofing is almost impossible to do after the fact unless you want to gut a place.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#220

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled. Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

A simple solution would be to require car companies to make the horn as loud inside the vehicle as it is outside.

However, general motor traffic noise - tyres, engines, displaced air - is loud enough to be a serious problem anyway.

I don't know how we solve this. Car dependency is so ingrained in our collective consciousness; is it politically feasible to find a way out?

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