Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#11

Post by Swizec » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:50 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #4

drstewart wrote: post #2

This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…

When earbuds came on the market, Audiologists said "this is going to be a disaster in 20 years time" and guess what: tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss levels are through the roof. I think its to one side of your concern, but related: we truly don't socialize the needed guarding of our eardrums. It's a vicious cycle: unexpected mechanical noises stop us sleeping, leads to weight gain, diabetes, heart problems,…

> When earbuds came on the market

I switched to active noise cancelling headphones and earbuds several years ago (2015-ish) primarily because they enable me to keep volume at like 20% and still get the benefits of sound isolation. It's been a huge revolution for me personally.

Running for 2 hours used to give me an ear-ache. Now it's perfect. The improvement in comfort from music-at-the-office is even bigger. 8 hours was a lot and sound isolation is really important to me. I can't focus if I can hear other humans and eating noises make me wanna punch people.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#12

Post by arthurcolle » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:51 AM UTC

I moved to Miami in October of last year and holy shit some people have no respect for personal noise emissions. People in Lambos deliberately revving their engines for no reason other than flexing decibel levels, others in motorcycles doing the same thing - it is truly insane. That, combined with airplanes flying into and out of MIA really make it a fundamentally noisy place to live. I imagine it even causes issues with local ecosystems that are equally or even more susceptible to disturbances due to loud sounds.

Need to move to North Beach or something away from the crowds... lol

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#13

Post by Buttons840 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:51 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #4

drstewart wrote: post #2

This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…

When earbuds came on the market, Audiologists said "this is going to be a disaster in 20 years time" and guess what: tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss levels are through the roof. I think its to one side of your concern, but related: we truly don't socialize the needed guarding of our eardrums. It's a vicious cycle: unexpected mechanical noises stop us sleeping, leads to weight gain, diabetes, heart problems,…

    */5 * * * * osascript -e 'set volume output volume (output volume of (get volume settings))-1'

Speaking of tinnitus, and since this is Hacker News: I've entered the above in crontab (crontab -e) on my mac. It lowers the volume a small amount every 5 minutes. I have to press the volume up button once every 30 minutes to keep a roughly equal volume level.

This prevents me from accidentally listening to something that is too loud for too long. At the level I usually listen to music, it takes about 2 hours to fade to nothing; it's a linear fade, so after 30 minutes the volume is at 75% my preferred starting volume. If I get lost in my work, the music gradually fades and I avoid realizing many hours later that I've been blasting my ears the whole time.

I wish all devices had a mode like this. I haven't investigated how to do this on Linux, but it should be possible there as well I think.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#14

Post by paisawalla » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:52 AM UTC

If we in CA could achieve compliance with the already standing laws against loud exhaust to anywhere near the levels we have with, say, plastic straw riddance, the resulting benefit to society would be drastically superior. I can't think of anything with a lower cost/benefit ratio than just the wholesale confiscation and ban of Harleys.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#15

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

drstewart wrote: post #2

This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…

[deleted]

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#16

Post by shados » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

drstewart wrote: post #2

This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…

Not only do people not care, they actively push down and belittle people who do. They'll say it's just something that's notmaly and anyone trying to change it should move.

Most source of noise pollution wouldnt be that hard to fix. Society just doesn't want to.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#17

Post by kfarr » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:55 AM UTC

sammalloy wrote: post #10

> road noise during the day My understanding is that the vast majority of road noise is caused by vehicles outfitted with non-standard tires. Where I live, 90% of the road noise is caused by lifted trucks using massive off-road tires on local roads and highways. It isn’t clear if this against the law all over the country, but in various US states, the police will issue tickets. There are several employees of local bu…

Yes, and same with modified exhaust systems and mufflers.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#18

Post by ne0flex » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC

drstewart wrote: post #2

This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…

On a somewhat related note, I've been living in NYC for the past 7 years or so. I noticed that whenever I go to visit my parents house in Canada, the lack of noise kind of stresses me out. The first few nights when I try to sleep, it's just too quiet and something feels weird.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#19

Post by cameronh90 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 1:59 AM UTC

I haven't read the underlying studies but I wonder if this applies to consistent noise or just intermittent sounds, like the airplanes and railway line examples they focus on.

Personally I can't sleep in a quiet room, so I put on white noise generator plus usually music or podcasts. I find that subjectively I sleep better with some relaxing sounds. However, it could be possible that my brain isn't properly turning off and I'm just unaware of it.

Their possible explanation is that the brain is waking up to process whether a sound is dangerous, which makes sense for intermittent sounds, but you would imagine we're adapted to sleep properly in the presence of semi-intermittent/constant sounds which would be normal in nature.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#20

Post by nanidin » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:01 AM UTC

eliseumds wrote: post #8

ggm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When earbuds came on the market, Audiologists said "this is going to be a disaster in 20 years time" and guess what: tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss levels are through the roof. I think its to one side of your concern, but related: we truly don't socialize the needed guarding of our eardrums. It's a vicious cycle: unexpected mechanical noises stop us sleeping, leads to weight gain, diabetes, heart problems,…

Yep, I joined the tinnitus bandwagon in the beginning of the pandemic. I was locked up at home and neighbouring dogs wouldn't shut up all day, so I resorted to earplugs and here I am now. Surprisingly I met at least 5 other people with the same problem recently, and they were all told by doctors that it was due to stress and not earplugs/headphones. I call it BS.

Earplugs gave you tinnitus? Do you mean earbuds? Earplugs are typically hearing PPE.