Shut the f*+^ up

Why reducing noise pollution is my new favorite rant, and could be yours too

I have an odd contradiction in my thought processes. On the one hand I spend an inordinate amount of energy being annoyed by noise, but on the other I’ve never given much credence to the importance of noise pollution. Like many of us, I can get distracted and stressed by the sounds of our refrigerator or water pump, especially when I’m trying to sleep. And when I’m outside in my garden, my perfect moments often evaporate as road or airplane noise pops my bliss bubble. But noise dissipates after a few seconds, so compared to the millennial timescale of atmospheric carbon or oceanic plastic, noise pollution seems like a dalliance - a petulant response of first worlders. That said, there is one instance of noise that I’ve always felt justified in being angry about, and that is noise in the ocean. Noisy shipping lanes and explosions in the ocean prevent whales from communicating over the vast distance they did before man-made noises drowned them out. Such a beautiful practice - devastated. I find that heart breaking. It was oceanic noise which I set out to write about in this issue, but I soon discovered that I’d dismissed noise pollution on land without understanding it has dire consequences.

Noise pollution is considered as the second biggest environmental stresser to people, second only to air pollution. This is because noise is nearly ubiquitous and it has a wide range of health implications. Noise is estimated to lead to the loss of one million years worth of healthy living every year in Europe alone. This means either one million people are unhealthy through out the year or these million years worth of poor health are shared amongst more of the population. Traffic noise contributes to ischemic heart disease, sleep disturbance and annoyance at pandemic levels. And while this may seem unimportant in the grand scheme of things, new research has also linked traffic noise to increased risk of stroke, diabetes and learning impairment, not to mention stress, anxiety and decline of cognitive functioning. Probably through the mechanism of increased stress levels which we all know noise can create.

To put some numbers to these impacts The European Environment Agency conducted an extensive review of research on noise’s impacts and found that more than in 1 in 5 people are exposed to harmful levels of noise every year. In the EU alone, noise pollution, mainly from road traffic, caused 12,000 premature deaths, 28,000 new cases of heart disease, 22 million individuals to suffer from chronic high annoyance and 6.5 million to experience chronic high levels of sleep disturbance. In turn these have contributed to increased incidents of aggression and violence in noisy environments. In addition, at least 12,500 school kids in the EU suffer from learning impairment from aircraft noise. I could not find detailed information on the impacts of noise for the US population. This is probably because the EPA stopped funding the Office of Noise Abatement and Control in 1982 leading to a lack of regular country wide assessments of noise pollution and its consequences in the US.

So we know that noise is injurious to our health, but what are the impacts on wildlife? Similar to humans, animals exposed to high levels of noise show signs of chronic stress, such as skewed stress hormone levels and distracted and hyper vigilant behaviors. For instance, frogs in noisy settings experience changes to their metabolism and immune system. Birds avoid places with the highest traffic levels, and change the time of day they sing, the frequency they sing at and even the duration of their songs. Wrong judgements of other birds’ songs, due to the presence of loud traffic noise, lead to greater levels aggression between birds. And while wildlife’s stress response is similar to humans, so too is the universality of exposure to man made sounds. Consider, for instance, an isolated back country site in Yosemite National park. During peak traffic hours, aircraft can be heard 70% of the time. The median noise levels at the Yosemite site increase by 3-5 dB when aircraft are over head. Because decibels are a logarithmic scale, every 3 dB increase in sound levels means a doubling of the sound’s power. Whereas a 5 dB increase in sound translates to a 45% reduction in the distance at which prey can hear predators coming. And of course there is a similar reduction in distance over which animals could hear territorial warnings, predators on the prowl, or mating calls. Therefore, an increase of 5 dB, even temporarily, can lead to disruptions in hunting, mating and territorial behaviors. A study in Europe found that 19% of protected areas had noise levels that exceeded the Environmental Noise Directive, primarily because of transport noise. So even in pristine areas, about 1 in 5 European wild animals is experiencing stressful noise levels. The same fraction as European people.

Taken together, the impacts of man made noises on humans and on wildlife lead me to wonder if unwanted sounds are contributing to the increase in mental health issues both amongst our youth and amongst our elderly. Could noise also be a driving factor in the plummeting insect numbers at various sites around the world since so many of them rely on noise to communicate? These two conjectures are just my wandering thoughts, but it was a surprise to me to learn that noise is most definitely degrading the lives of terrestrial animals.

So what about those whales that got me started on this topic? Perhaps the greatest source of noise pollution in the oceans are shipping lanes, though mining and sonar are issues as well. But shipping lanes, much like our roads, deliver a near constant hum of noise. Low frequency noise (5 - 1000 Hz) from ships is the main source of ambient noise in the deep ocean having led to a 20 dB increase in background noise levels since pre-industrial times. That’s a 7 fold increase in the energy of a constant hum. And that’s in the deep ocean, thousands and thousands of feet below the shipping lanes. A 20 dB increase in noise levels is like the change from a quiet room to having someone speaking a foot from your ear. I know this because of a really cool ap you can get for your phone: NIOSH SLM. Have a play, it’s cool. But back to business, the frequency band within which ship engines and propellers emit overlaps many marine animals vocalizations thus interrupting toothed whales’ social communication, humpback’s non-song signals, southern resident killer whales vocalizations and echolocation clicks and probably also northern resident killer whales. There are countless examples of marine mammals responding to noise by changing their vocalization patterns, avoiding places with loud noises, partaking in longer and sudden dives, changing migration paths, beaching themselves, and changing foraging and breeding patterns. And its not just the mammals that are affected, fish show impaired growth and reproductive success, increased stress, and higher rates of mortality in the presence of water noises. Marine invertebrates, who are strongly attuned to collect sounds with antenna and hairs, show many communication and biological behavioral changes in noisy situations.

What can we do about all this kerfuffle? Unfortunately, most countries’ regulations are neither comprehensive nor enforced, even though the WHO has set recommended upper limits to noise of 53 dB during the day and 45 dB at night. So the burden for reducing noise falls on our local communities and individuals. There are various recommendations that span the usual pollution reduction schemes - reduce the source and intercept the outflow. On land, electric cars, and indeed electric yard equipment, are recommended as they are quieter than fossil fuel engines. Quieter road surfaces and tires, reduced speeds, curfews for heavy traffic, and enforced penalties can all act to reduce noise at its source. In terms of reducing propagation of traffic noise, we can introduce barriers such as sound proof walls or thick evergreen hedges. The closer the barrier is to the source of noise the more effective it will be at reducing the spread of the noise. But as a last resort, we can also sound proof windows, hang heavy drapes, insulate our houses and even put bookshelves against shared walls. It probably goes without saying that limiting the spread of noise isn’t an effective strategy to reduce noise’s negative impacts on wildlife.

And as always, it seems that the offered solution is carry on as usual and to apply few bandaids, when the obvious solution to reduce overall transport. This is especially the case here, because we need to reduce transportation anyway - to reduce carbon emissions, to save wildlife and biodiversity, and to protect our oceans and our rivers. So the call is once again to buy, live, work, and recreate locally. Noting two statistics: 89% of road miles in the US is by cars and nearly 90% of what we buy in the US comes from overseas. That’s staggering. The noise from driving is deteriorating the quality of our lives in dramatic ways and our purchasing is killing whales via ship noise. One of the biggest oceanic noise contributors are bananas, they are the second most shipped item, by weight. I used to buy these almost every week, forgoing my own advice to live locally. What’s more, over 12 billion dollars worth of fresh and frozen fruit was imported to the US in 2015. Really? Do we need all that exotic fruit and veg when it is literally killing whales? For my own self, this additional bit of understanding will change my fruit habits for sure. I hope it may for some of you as well.

In addition to building my conviction that I do well by not buying much and going local, this newsletter has reminded me of the importance of quiet time. Research shows that we benefit greatly from regular periods of peace and quiet. Our bodies can rest and repair. Patients in hospital are known to heal faster in quiet setting - not to mention that nurses are less worn out in quiet hospitals. In quiet times, our fight or flight stress response is reduced in turn lowering our heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension and stress hormones. Quiet also improves our focus and thought processes. Furthermore, when we are quiet, we can daydream which is known to improve productivity and creativity. But perhaps most rewardingly, being peaceful gives us opportunities to be present and enjoy this amazing world we live in. All told, thinking about noise has given new depths to the old saying “Peace be with you.”