Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

knowablemagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 531 posts

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

#51

Post by dylan604 »

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.

Of all of the years as a DJ using headphones in loud settings, all of the concerts, all of the events with loud amplified sound systems, etc, I was able to avoid tinnitus. It wasn't until I was driving and was t-boned in my side of the car with a side impact airbag going off. I walked away from the car with nothing more than a few scratches from flying glass, this lovely ringing in the ear, and this lousy t-shirt.

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

#52

Post by hiptobecubic »

Swizec wrote: post #11
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,…

> 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…

I hope you aren't running with ear plugs and noise cancelling headphones or have some dedicated safe place to run.

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

#54

Post by Gigachad »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #38
Gigachad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo it should become regulation that all cars have to have some audio transparency tech like headphones have. Then we would be able to lower the volume of emergency sirens which are obscenely loud to penetrate cars.

Massively reducing car usage is a much better solution with much more wide-spread benefits.

That as well. But it does feel very wrong that combustion engine users can emit huge amounts of noise and pollution while sitting in sound proof, HEPA filtered boxes.

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

#56

Post by gonehome »

seattle_spring wrote: post #29
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…

People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the US. Peaceful hike? Here's Katy Perry crackling out of my iPhone at full blast! Luxury apartment at $4k a month? No insulation between units, and the guy above you comes home at 2am and never takes his shoes off. Small country street? Here comes Chad with his straight-piped civic with the muffler removed!

I find by far the biggest disruption in US suburbs is lawn equipment. Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you. Often for hours.

Moving from Palo Alto to SF things got way quieter.

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

#57

Post by dugite-code »

Buttons840 wrote: post #13
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,…

*/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 i…

Thought this was interesting so had a quick search and here is what I found

For linux there are a few solutions depending on the install:

    */5 * * * * pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -2%
or with amixer

    */5 * * * * amixer -D pulse sset Master 2%-
Terminal command to set audio volume? - https://askubuntu.com/a/97945

For windows you can use powershell to trigger the Volume Down Button

    $obj = new-object -com wscript.shell
    $obj.SendKeys([char]174)
Simply add the script to a Task scheduler task (create as a daily task then go into advanced and trigger every x minutes)

Change audio level from powershell - https://stackoverflow.com/a/21362870 Run a task every x-minutes - https://stackoverflow.com/a/4250516

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

#58

Post by jeffbee »

Gigachad wrote: post #54
ben-schaaf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massively reducing car usage is a much better solution with much more wide-spread benefits.

That as well. But it does feel very wrong that combustion engine users can emit huge amounts of noise and pollution while sitting in sound proof, HEPA filtered boxes.

The horn on automobiles should be mounted inside the cabin. They can make it as loud as they need to make it, but the person who hears it the loudest should be the driver.

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

#59

Post by Karrot_Kream »

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…

It all comes back to code. Noise abatement materials are not part of most residential building codes in the US because most residential buildings are expected to be single family homes with detached lots. If you don't live in that situation then tough luck. Very little effort is spent politically trying to improve quality of life in any other form of domicile.

Concretely I suggest reaching out to your city council and trying to push for using more noise abating materials in code depending on the classification of residence (e.g. for dense residential.) My partner and I live in a condo run by an HOA and noise abatement material (underflooring, between walls, etc) up to certain spec is mandated by our HOA. We only hear our neighbors when they're having drywall work done in the home.

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

#60

Post by Forgeties79 »

gonehome wrote: post #56
seattle_spring wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the US. Peaceful hike? Here's Katy Perry crackling out of my iPhone at full blast! Luxury apartment at $4k a month? No insulation between units, and the guy above you comes home at 2am and never takes his shoes off. Small country street? Here comes Chad with his straight-piped civic with the muffler removed!

I find by far the biggest disruption in US suburbs is lawn equipment. Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you. Often for hours. Moving from Palo Alto to SF things got way quieter.

It drives me absolutely insane. I can’t record audio virtually anywhere unless I treat the hell out of the room. I shouldn’t have to turn my room into a soundproof bunker to be able to record some voiceovers. It’s ridiculous.

My previous home office had spray foam insulation with double layer sheet rock and bass traps on the walls, yet I still had to have a small homemade box around the microphone when I was doing any sort of voice work that wasn’t more informal.

Post reply on HN