The Noise Emergency, How To Deal With It

Whoever is used to live in the city tends to take the noise for granted; in fact disorientation is a classic sign that hits us when we are spending an evening in the countryside or in a little town and so it happens to have around us a bit of real silence. Noise is a constant factor in modern life, among cars, music, screams, horns, telephones, drills and so on.

Sometimes we cannot even remember what silence is. It is something to fear about, as the awkward silence between two people who dont know what to say. But we say that silence is gold. And we also say that when two people can spend time together with no need to talk continuously, that is a real friendship. No useless discourses, no noises to confuse their thinking.
But this is certainly not the worst problem. First of all because the habit to the noise is just partial, in fact our body keeps perceive it and in the long run this thing is not at all without consequences.

In whole Europe it is esteemed that about 25% of the population is exposed daily to such elevated noise to become a serious danger for their health. Recent studies show that noise is today one of the most important causes of the deterioration of our living standards in the cities, particularly in the big cities. Both at work and at home, we are continuously bombarded, so it would be better at least to adopt some air treatment filters as a first barrier against the noise.

In most cases the problem makes worse because a lot of young people suffer of hearing loss but they are not aware of it and especially they are not aware of the dangers they are exposed in the workplace, when they dont wear for example a earmuff or some silence cabin are not in use, or in the disco, when they listen to the music at high volume with earphones, in the traffic, in the subway, on public transportations, in the squares.

There are just a few places really exempt from noise pollution. Today this problem causes a lot of physical and mental diseases, such as insomnia, palpitations, depression, feelings of insecurity, lack of concentration, high stress levels, and inability to remain silent, sleep disturbances, poor memory, irritability and hurry. And the World Health Organization starts considering the urban noise as one of the main causes of hypertension and among the causes of heart attack.

A problem surely not to underestimate, neither at work or at home. One of the best solutions would be to install soundproofing walls that can have a double function. The first is to keep disturbing noises out of the domestic walls and so avoid noise contamination at least when you are inside your house or in your office. The second function is not let the internal noises coming out, especially in presence of particularly noisy industrial processes or high volume radio and TV. This way we wont be damaged by others people noises or anyway we wont damage other people with disturbing noises.

It is very important to protect our ears and our brains from this dangerous, even if often underestimated, pollution agent. But it is also as much important to avoid other people suffering serious mental or physical diseases.