Thread: Noise pollution.

Omnipresent 'music' at stratospheric volume levels, car engines, car horns, people screaming, construction sites, etc. Sometimes, when I'm back in home, after all this noise, I don't want to listen to music, I just want silence and dark. I find the silence experience in those cases almost as a tranquilizer drug. I think I may be hypersensitive to noise pollution, few things can put me in such a bad mood, sometimes to the point of physical discomfort, like heartburn. I can't think properly, I just want silence.

Originally Posted by aleazk

Omnipresent 'music' at stratospheric volume levels, car engines, car horns, people screaming, construction sites, etc. Sometimes, when I'm back in home, after all this noise, I don't want to listen to music, I just want silence and dark. I find the silence experience in those cases almost as a tranquilizer drug. I think I may be hypersensitive to noise pollution, few things can put me in such a bad mood, sometimes to the point of physical discomfort, like heartburn. I can't think properly, I just want silence.

Although a lot of the time my little cul de sac is fairly quiet, there is a currently a construction site next door. It's not the hammers and drills and staple guns that drive me mad, but rather the endless vapid yak yak yak of the commercial radio stations that they listen to from 7 to 4.30 every day except Sunday (when the other equally inane neighbour turns on his leaf blower and motor mower and revs his vintage motor car and nags his poor little son in a horrible high pitched whine.)

So yes, I sympathise.

People screaming???

That reminds me, I was staying in the city over night once and there were these people in the units next door, they were having an argument. They weren't yelling but I could hear them easily. Something to do with America. It was quite interesting. Except that it was past midnight and I was trying to sleep.

Originally Posted by aleazk

Omnipresent 'music' at stratospheric volume levels, car engines, car horns, people screaming, construction sites, etc. Sometimes, when I'm back in home, after all this noise, I don't want to listen to music, I just want silence and dark. I find the silence experience in those cases almost as a tranquilizer drug. I think I may be hypersensitive to noise pollution, few things can put me in such a bad mood, sometimes to the point of physical discomfort, like heartburn. I can't think properly, I just want silence.

Wanted noise can be wonderful, but unwanted noise can be truly painful. I have a neighbor whose dogs can bark quite often throughout the day. In the evening when I want to listen to music or read, it's very difficult to hear the dogs barking randomly even if the barks are not especially loud.

Interestingly, I work with someone who quantifies the social cost of transportation such as pollution, carbon emissions, space usage for parking, etc. He develops a cost in say $/kg of carbon emissions or $/meter^2 of parking space. He has included the cost of noise from vehicles. Housing that is closer to high volume, higher speed roads has less value partly due to this "noise pollution". While people living in cities get used to this noise to some degree, excessive noise can certainly be a depressing component of one's environment.

I like listening to people screaming as long as they aren't related to me.

When I started taking walks at the forest near my house I expected it to be peaceful and distant from the noise of the city, but even in the deep you can hear the sirens and the sound of the city's street.

It does feel quite weird, when it seems that you are so far away from everything, but the sound still reaches you.

Originally Posted by aleazk

Omnipresent 'music' at stratospheric volume levels, car engines, car horns, people screaming, construction sites, etc. Sometimes, when I'm back in home, after all this noise, I don't want to listen to music, I just want silence and dark. I find the silence experience in those cases almost as a tranquilizer drug. I think I may be hypersensitive to noise pollution, few things can put me in such a bad mood, sometimes to the point of physical discomfort, like heartburn. I can't think properly, I just want silence.

For some who have reached the ultimate Zen Guru level, all of what you have described is music to their ears.

I find that the kind of noise I dislike always seems to be far louder than the kind of noise I can put up with, whether it be human, animal, musical or mechanical. As regards music, the more bass-heavy it is (i.e. push-button 4/4 dance garbage so beloved of the boy racer with a low brain/body mass ratio and the town/city centre meat-market pub/club culture), the louder people seem to want to inflict it upon the rest of the world.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...86P0R820120726

Wow, I must be 70.

edit : stupid post. Next time, I read properly before posting. Sorry.

No matter how much noise I've heard in a day, nothing calms me more than coming home and listening to nightly jazz radio.

Headphones and Malbec.

It is finding peace and tranquility within these surroundings that is key.

I have a little bro who sings out of tune everyday and he doesn't even try to get better so i guess that counts as a noise pollution .

Originally Posted by kv466

It is finding peace and tranquility within these surroundings that is key.

Yeah. I wish you hadn't mentioned 'key' though. Now I am struggling to... argh... bar the door against a horde of 'clever' allusions to locks and rooms and... . Another, related pollution.

Maybe when I finish my morning coffee I'll be stronger.