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The Tyranny of Noise
Robert Alex Baron
The World’s Most Prevalent Pollution
Who Causes It, How it’s Hurting You and How to Fight it.
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Workers with scarred eardrums were preparing to launch an open-cut subway extension project for the New York City Transit Authority. As luck would have it, the Slattery Construction Company had chosen the southwest corner of Fifty-fifth Street and Sixth Avenue, just opposite the windows of my apartment, to assemble the five compressors. |
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PART I–Introduction to Noise |
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Chapter 1 |
The noise victim is not alone in his suffering. And he has every reason for feeling disturbed. He is surrounded by an excess of noisemakers, motor-driven machines and devices that are not designed for quiet operation. |
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Chapter 2 |
It is almost as if the noisy machine is protected by a wall of measuring systems and units. Trying to define noise and quantify human response has become a substitute for seeking to achieve a less noise-stressed civilization. Quality is dictated by statistics and formulae, not by intuition and common sense. |
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PART II–The Price of Noise |
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Chapter 3 |
If ours were a civilized society, it would not be necessary to work so hard to make a case for noise as a health problem. But when courts rule that we must accept annoyance and even damage from noise as the price of civilization, a public health rationale for noise abatement becomes a must. |
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Chapter 4 |
As we continue probing the new concept of environmental quality we will discover that the total cost of excessive noise is something society cannot afford. |
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Chapter 5 |
The Price in Environmental Quality Democracy gives man the right to vote, but not the right to sleep; the right to dissent, but not the right to minimize the noises of social utility; the right to go to school, but not the right to be able to hear the teacher. |
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PART III–Acoustic Anarchy |
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Chapter 6 |
When it comes to noise assault the city dweller is disenfranchised. Judges consistently have ruled that when one agrees to live in a city he agrees to accept any and all noise that goes with city living. |
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Chapter 7 |
The problem of noise is seen as a balancing of business interests against the interests of a suffering public, except that business is identified with “the public,” and ordinary people, the victims, are left out in the noisy cold. |
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PART IV–Design for Quiet |
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Chapter 8 |
People are all too frequently unaware of how their noisemaking activities impinge on their neighbors. Requests for quiet are interpreted as personal attacks, and raise hackles. |
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Chapter 9 |
The majority still fails to understand the need to lessen the noise assault, and among the enlightened who acknowledge “noise pollution” one finds a tendency to relegate its solution to the bottom of the heap of pressing problems. |
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Chapter 10 |
Once government assigns a top priority to noise abatement it must establish a noise abatement function with the responsibility and the authority to oversee all government planning and actions that modify the noise environment. Fearful of the powers of a central agency, some would prefer to keep noise abatement as a fragmented operation of government. |
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