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The Politics of Noise

The Industrial Revolution destroyed one culture and replaced it with another, in the name of economic necessity. Modern technology is destroying livability for the same reason. 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.

Noise abatement is presented not as an essential, but a luxury. “Our most troublesome noise problems carry price tags,” states acoustic authority Leo Beranek, Ph.D.. “Economic considerations must be weighed against people’s desires for culture and the ‘good life.'”

The rights of the individual must give way to the new interpretation of public interest. Karl Kryter emphasized this in relation to community reaction to jet noise, when he stated: “It is obvious that air transportation brings benefits to the community at large and that air transportation is an important part of our economy and way of life. Perhaps the annoyance and disturbance suffered by some is the price that must be paid.”

When towns outside of New York City fought a fourth jetport, The New York Times considered them selfish. It editorialized, “Sympathetic as we are to the desire of local residents everywhere to escape the battered eardrums that go with a nearby jetport, one must be built for the welfare of the entire metropolitan complex of 17 million people.”

To protest against large chunks of desirable living space being pre-empted by noisy “progress,” is deemed reactionary. Aviation Week takes a dim view of those who oppose center-city aviation: “The attempt to bring a V/STOL type of air transport even deeper into the heart of communities than existing airports will certainly encounter formidable opposition of citizen groups, city councils, county boards, state legislatures and federal agencies bristling with reasons to stop the clock of airline progress.” (I wish I were as certain as this editor that government would be on the side of the public.)

We are now living in a world where to object to excessive noise is to get oneself labeled unpatriotic. When Manhattan residents complained of late-hour parade noises, the veterans’ organization sponsoring the event questioned their patriotism. Mayor Lindsay had to make a personal appearance to soothe ruffled feathers when the indignant veterans resolved never to convene in New York again.

New York City Councilman Robert Low received an unexpected response when he stopped the operator of a noisy cement mixer to speak of his interest in construction-noise legislation. He was rebuffed with an angry outcry: “You trying to lose me my job? You some kind of a Communist nut?”

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, “Anyone who objects to the SST’s noise is left feeling somehow unpatriotic and provincial.” The story went on to quote the Director of the FAA’s Office of Supersonic Transport Development, Air Force Major General J. C. Maxwell: “Americans must recognize that the airplane will benefit not only the people of the United States but the entire world as well.”

The FAA is aware of the power of belief in the “price of progress” doctrine to win jet noise acceptance. Its propaganda stresses the benefits of an airport as a revenue-producing commercial center generating millions of dollars in payrolls, thus making the interests of the airport and the community mutual. The Port of New York Authority, operator of four jetports, warns that New York City’s position as the financial and economic center of the world depends, in part, upon making it convenient for business executives to travel between New York and other cities.

To counter critics of round-the-clock flights, the FAA painted a dark economic picture of what would happen if restrictions were applied: “Banning night flights would be one sure way of eliminating some aircraft noise (but)…it would retard the normal growth of business; put a great many people out of work; seriously cut local payrolls; and otherwise adversely affect the welfare of the very community which seeks to impose the restrictions.”

In 1961 the FAA published a brochure, “Sounds of the Twentieth Century.” To make the public think the government cared, this brochure stated: “The Federal Aviation Agency, the aircraft and engine manufacturers, airlines, pilots, and airport operators are keenly aware of the disturbance that aircraft noise may cause to the people who live close to airports.” It further added that the “independent” National Aircraft Noise Abatement Council was going to work hard to find “an acceptable solution to this difficult and complex problem.”

Aware that many persons are frightened by jet noise, the FAA offered the reassurance: “…A lack of understanding of how aircraft operate causes many people to be alarmed when they see and hear aircraft land or take off. This in turn, like many things that are strange to us, can easily arouse fear. By its very nature fear causes resentment and stress. This can be alleviated, however, by a better understanding of modern aircraft which are larger and often appear to be closer than they are to an observer on the ground. Modern jet aircraft…are remarkably reliable.”

Not only did the FAA try to eradicate fear, it tried to inculcate a favorable attitude toward jet noise: “The sound of our own aircraft engines can be as reassuring to us as they were to the people of West Germany during the Berlin Airlift. America’s air power…includes our air traffic control system, our network of Federal airways…and all of civil aviation…We must never lose sight of the importance of civil aviation to our national defense.”

The FAA has made strong emotional appeals for nighttime flights, such as: “Many people have rushed by air at night to the bedside of seriously ill friends and relatives when other transportation would have been too slow. Lives have been saved because a surgeon could fly at night from one part of the country to another…”

Though years have passed since this public relations program was started, and complaints keep escalating, the belief in the efficacy of public relations to minimize complaints continues. When the FAA conducted tests of public reaction to sonic booms in Oklahoma City, the complaints were substantial. Part of the negative reaction is blamed by the FAA not on the sonic boom but on a poor public relations job. Major General Maxwell, then the FAA’s SST program director, is quoted as saying: “We [shall] need to do a much better job of selling the SST story in the years ahead.”

Faced with mounting protests, and with the expected increase of complaints from the larger jets and the sonic boom, a new Federal interagency aviation noise committee is urging a new and stronger public relations program. It is recommending that steps be taken to mitigate opposition to jet noise at the grassroots level. It further advises that preparations be made to counter the expected reaction to noise when the government releases “noise contours” which will show the noise levels at various distances from the major airports. The substance of the counterattack is to be an educational program enumerating all the “positive” things being done to tackle the problem of jet noise.

In all fairness to the FAA, it must be said that the aviation industry, too, is preparing to squelch complaints with public relations. In 1968 the international association of airline operators called a special public relations conference in Rio de Janeiro. The aviation industry was told that public relations was the best strategy for dealing with the jet noise problem. Not hit-or-miss public relations, but a thorough, full-scale continuous campaign that would try to nip complaints in the bud, or, if that failed, to de-fuse any explosive buildups. The airline representatives were told to be on the alert for murmurings of discontent in local communities and prepared to move quickly before unrest became organized and vocal. Organized action was to be forestalled by evolving a scheme for paying attention to individual complaints. If that failed, there should be an industry community council which would enable the community leaders to sit down with the airlines and be told what was being done to alleviate the problem. The community leaders would also be invited to explore with the airlines ways of improving the situation.

Public relations can make a temporary and unavoidable intense noise somewhat more bearable, but should not serve as a propaganda device to justify and continue a policy of unlimited noise. As when former Secretary of Transportation Alan Boyd said we must accept jet noise because we have accepted, having failed to silence them, trucks and railroads. Or when L. M. Tondel Jr., a lawyer member of a Federal jet noise alleviation panel, states: “The airport noise problem is not unique. Noise is also an unfortunate concomitant of garbage collection, trucks, pile drivers, riveters, pneumatic drills, sirens, sound trucks, heavy trucks and buses, small sports cars, freeways, even radios, television sets and garbage disposal units.”

To implement the “complaint squelch” program, aviation has prepared color motion picture films and elaborate colored slides and charts. “Why It Must Be Noisy” programs are available through local FAA noise abatement offices. These offices are listed in the telephone book, and the public can complain any day of the week. It can also complain to an electronic answering service on weekends and at night.

To sap your will to fight a new noise source, developers seek to create a feeling of inevitability. Road builders and public officials who route new roads next to people’s homes cut down complaints by telling the community how important the road is, and at the same time reduce their will to fight it with the pronouncement that the road will be built no matter what. Paul Borsky, a leading noise survey specialist, spells out the effectiveness of such brainwashing: “If he feels the noise is inevitable, and unavoidable, and that the road is important and necessary, he will want to ignore the noise and continue about his business.”

Not all brainwashing is conducted by the giants of transportation and construction. A trade association of private garbage collectors wants the public to know it cares. It adorns the sides of 100-decibel trucks with the slogan: “Shh. People are sleeping.”

The failure to regulate industrial noise is a scandal that will someday rock the country. In 1968, outgoing Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz drew up a regulation specifying a maximum noise exposure of 85 decibels that would have to be met by industries with government contracts in excess of $10,000. Industry regarded this proposal as extremely restrictive, and got the ear of the new Secretary of Labor, George Schultz. He established a review committee consisting primarily of representatives of industry, and medical men and others friendly to industry. The final number adopted was 90 decibels, instead of 85. It is claimed that ten per cent of the work force will lose its ability to hear the spoken word under these “improved” provisions. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing who that ten per cent will be until they start to lose their hearing. Even then this will go undetected unless there is an on-going hearing testing program, something unlikely in the small factories that employ 80 per cent of the work force of the nation.

Even Fortune Magazine (October 1969) was critical of the new regulations, pointing out that millions of workers in plants with fewer than 20 workers and less than $10,000 in contracts would be excluded, and that the 90 dB(A) noise limit was “5 dB(A) more than the experts regarded as safe.”

One would have imagined that after the 1948 Slawinski case, industry would have embarked on a program of all-out noise control. After all, in that historic ruling the courts for the first time recognized that noise-induced hearing loss was compensable. And industry was petrified, fearful of an avalanche of lawsuits. The period immediately following that historic decision was called “the industrial noise crisis.”

But instead of reducing its noisy status quo, industry embarked on a program of noise liability reduction that was quite analogous to a program of reducing noise complaints instead of noise.

Physicians developed a category of hearing loss called “hearing impairment.” This was an extreme degree of hearing loss, and it was further qualified in workmen’s compensation laws to meet a medico-legal definition of liability. Special conditions of exposure had to be met before a case of deafness, as defined, could be charged to on-the-job exposure.

The compensation criteria are worth examining. The first rule is that the employee must have worked a certain number of years in employment exceeding arbitrary “damage-risk” noise levels, usually 8 hours a day above 85 decibels.

For purposes of disability compensation, the damage must be so extensive as to seriously impair hearing for speech. Only a hearing impairment as officially defined is recognized as a disability.

Under the New York State Workmen’s Compensation Law, to qualify for an award, not only must the hearing show a loss below 2,000 cps, but that loss must be substantial.

Industry’s 2,000 cps bare-bones-of-speech criterion appears harsh even for workers, let alone the general population. How harsh is revealed by the case of a man in New York City, who worked for 44 years in the noisy pressroom of a newspaper at exposure over the damage-risk level, but could not qualify for compensation. Though three specialists diagnosed his hearing loss as severe, it was in the 4,000 cps range, and not 2,000 cps and under. So though his loss, according to the three otologists, handicapped his ability to hear all of the sounds of speech, especially some consonant sounds, he was not deaf by definition. Insurance companies and industry, influential in developing the medico-legal definitions of deafness, decide how much speech one may hear in this world.

If a worker has lost his hearing and wishes to file a claim, he must separate himself from his noisy job and wait six months. Having to wait six months discourages claims; it also encourages workers to delay making any claims until they retire. Many workers would rather knowingly grow deaf and continue working than leave for six months of idleness or transfer to a quiet but undesired job, probably with a loss of seniority and pay. “It is very unusual for a man to leave a noisy job to preserve his hearing,” said a member of the Halifax Labor Department. The total number of hearing loss claims processed in the United States is relatively small; it is estimated that fewer than 500 cases were settled in 1966.

The worker who is able to separate himself from his noisy job for six months and prove he has lost a substantial amount of his hearing below 2,000 cps doesn’t get too much for his pains. The states that do recognize noise-induced hearing loss set a limit on weekly payments, plus a limit on the number of weeks for which payments will be made. Michigan grants a maximum award of $28,500 for total loss of hearing in both ears, while Nebraska awards only $3,700 for the same amount of damage. For living the balance of your life unable to hear much human speech, New York State will award you a maximum weekly benefit of $80 for 60 weeks for one ear, 150 weeks for two.

There are some small touches of humanity. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, if a deafened worker has suffered a minimum of a specified noise exposure he must wait out the six months–but is entitled to a hearing aid plus reimbursement for batteries while waiting.

It is easy to understand why some experts argue that city noise will not make one deaf, if one knows that in a factory, too many minutes away from an excessively noisy machine may disqualify the operator from eventual compensation. According to theory, any temporary escape from damaging noise allows the damaged ears to recuperate. A leading industrial noise control engineer alerts employers to observe how often an employee escapes his noisy environment: “Inconspicuous interruptions could easily occur in what might appear to be a continuous exposure due to lunch periods, coffee breaks, washroom visits, occasional stoppage of machinery, etc.” The sharp-eyed factory manager can reduce workmen’s compensation claims not by reducing the noise level but by keeping a careful record of how much coffee his operators drank, how many cigarettes they smoked, and how often they went to the restroom.

An insurance company acoustician laughed when I told him someday construction workers would be getting workmen’s compensation for hearing loss. He believes that he could prove that since the jackhammer is not operating continuously, or the operator is sometimes away from his equipment, the deafened worker could not substantiate his claim. However, government research has already shown hearing loss in road construction workers.

Too few doctors look upon excessive everyday noise exposure as undesirable. An editorial in the issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association for September 23, 1968, poked fun at the National Noise Study of the Public Health Service, inanely making it seem that PHS was too concerned about something that only involved a small group of industrial workers. As for the rest of the population, the editorial believed that man’s ears can take it, as they always have. Some idea of the nature of this shocking piece of medical irresponsibility is found in its concluding two sentences: “The noises of the cities are the featherbeds of comfort, and noise pollution is nothing but pollution with excessive people. The quality of noise needs improvement, some think, but the quantity is only reasonable.”

This type of thinking limits the health argument to industrial hearing loss. In practice there is more likelihood for political action if noise were to be recognized as a general threat to health and to the environment.

The lack of an industry-approved standard, or the decibel limit set by a standard, can determine whether or not you lose your hearing, sleep properly, or can live a life of minimum acoustic stress.

Few legislative bodies will enact regulatory legislation without the existence of an officially approved reference standard. Industry, by dominating the standard-setting process, can prevent or delay the adoption of standards, or can see to it that any standards that are adopted are virtually meaningless.

There are today no state laws limiting occupational noise exposure. Three states–California, Washington, and Oregon–have safety orders that offer very little protection. The permitted noise levels are too high; emphasis is on the use of ear protectors, and not on engineering methods for noise reduction.

More typical is the lack of any limitation. The Pennsylvania Department of Health in 1966 could report that though it had twenty years of experience with industrial noise surveys, it had not succeeded in getting legislation which would impose standards on industry. All it could do was moralize with the factory operators.

Free men are treated no worse than convicts. Workers in the Federal prison factories–Leavenworth’s wooden furniture shops, the Terre Haute woolen textile mills, and the Lewisburg metal shops–are deafened by the noisy workshops. In a 24-month comparison study of various types of Federal prison workshops, the above groups experienced the greatest loss of hearing among the prisoners tested.

In the United States technical societies, trade groups, and testing organizations develop noise measurement standards and noise limits. Their umbrella organization is the private American National Standards Institute.

The organizations have standing standards committees the members of which include representatives of manufacturing concerns and insurance companies. There is some government representation, predominantly from the Department of Transportation, DOD, and NASA. It really doesn’t matter whether government or private groups work on a standard. Through interlocking memberships on policy-level committees, industry pretty well controls what items will be considered for standards, what the criteria will be, if any, and how many years or decades it will take before a given standard is adopted as a “recommended practice.” Delays are rationalized on the grounds of fairness to all parties, thoroughness, and the need for full agreement. Probably a more appropriate reason is that every year that goes by without a standard is considered an economic plus for industry.

According to one experienced member of standards working groups, if a standards committee cannot arrive at a set of standards in the time in which one could get a good technical college education (five years), then this group should resign. He believes there is no reason why standards cannot be set by two years from the time the working group is organized.

Though jet noise protests started in 1958, industry did nothing to set noise limits, and finally, in 1968, prodded by the Office of Science and Technology, Congress acted, and authorized the FAA to set noise standards.

The authorization was written in the language of the industry itself. It said that the standards should be “economically reasonable, technologically practicable and appropriate for the particular type of aircraft…to which [they] will apply.” These standards, in effect, legitimize the present noise levels, for the time being. As a matter of record, the new Boeing 747, which is quite noisy, was exempted from the new standards because allegedly the plans for the plane were started prior to the certification program.

The limits of adopted standards invariably represent the noise level produced by the equipment as manufactured. Known as “defensive standards,” they protect the manufacturer from the cost and inconvenience of having to quiet his products. “Conforms to the Standards of —-“is a meaningless phrase when applied to noise emissions.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) is consistent in recommending the adoption of practices that will not require the quieting of existing products. The public has no cause for rejoicing in the knowledge that the SAE has a “recommended practice” for certain types of construction equipment powered by internal combustion engines, such as bulldozers, power shovels and cranes, compactors, or paving machines. The following exchange took place in the special hearing chamber of the New York City Council between a councilman and a representative of the SAE, after the SAE man testified that the recommended decibel level for construction equipment was 90 decibels at 50 feet: “How many decibels,” asked the presiding chairman, Councilman Robert Low, “would 90 decibels be at 15 feet, the distance at which a New Yorker would more than likely be when passing one of those vehicles?”

The engineer stopped short, almost jabbing his aluminum pointer through his chart. He thought for a moment, and replied that the noise level would be something like 110 decibels.

“That’s interesting,” replied the councilman. “Mr. Baron and I were out this morning at a construction site and we winced at an air compressor making 95 decibels. Now you people are suggesting we legalize 110 decibels.”

What the SAE had done in arriving at that standard, was to measure–with precision–the noise emissions of existing mobile construction equipment and adopt the results as the decibel standard.

Not only do industry standards fail their chance of promoting environmental quality and protecting human beings, but conformance to them remains voluntary. Only legislation or government regulations can force compliance.

Unfortunately, in the rare cases when a law is enacted that sets a maximum limit on noise, it refers back to these regressive industry standards. For example, the first state law setting a maximum decibel limit for motor vehicles was enacted in 1965. Adopted by New York State, this law did not acknowledge the need for adequate quiet in the homes near the thruway, but recognized industry’s 1954 vehicle noise standard. In other words, at a time when noise pollution is escalating, legal limits are dictated by conditions that may have existed a decade earlier. There is no pressure on the automobile industry to produce quieter vehicles.

The consumer suffers not only from a lack of standards–and noise rating systems–he is given strange information about the noise emissions from consumer products. Take air conditioners, especially the window units. One of the most common recommendations found in mass media articles is to fight noise by switching on “the calming sounds of your air conditioner.” The fact is that the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers does not include window units in its decibel design guide–because they are too noisy. Insiders in the industry report to each other that though the public does not like the noise from air conditioners, it will tolerate that noise if it feels it is buying something inexpensive. To help the consumer tolerate that noise it is described as “acoustical perfume” desirable as masking for the street sounds of traffic. The latest development is to recommend air conditioner noise as a means of reducing the shock of aircraft flyovers! Small wonder that of more than 100 manufacturers of residential air conditioners, fewer than a dozen have acoustic facilities.

To forestall restrictive legislation, the industry, through its trade association, has developed its own “model” ordinance which it tries to sell to acoustically naive communities. Unnerved because Coral Gables, Florida, and Beverly Hills, California, adopted local laws calling for quiet air conditioning, the industry is now recommending that its dealers and distributors promote the model code drawn up by the American Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute. The editor of Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News has said about this code:

Our industry’s present recommended code suggests a 60-decibel level be permitted at the property line. In five years of actively monitoring the noise problem, I have yet to meet one person outside of our industry who does not consider 60 decibels an unreasonably permissive level…In Cincinnati, the code authorities openly laughed at our industry’s 60-decibel recommendation…The industry’s noise code is unrealistic.

There is no state or Federal agency in the United States to tell local civic leaders and city officials that the model code of the American Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute is a license to murder sleep.

The public could avoid buying excessively noisy air conditioners and appliances if it were afforded a noise rating system. Such ratings are available to military and industrial purchasing agents. One excuse the appliance industry gives for not noise-rating its consumer products is fear of a decibel war, in which one competitor will claim his product is one or two decibels quieter than those manufactured by the other guys, and consumers, presumably unaware that one decibel is not a significant difference, would favor that product. This argument must be taken with a grain of salt, if one observes the jargon about quiet in the promotion of today’s noisy air conditioners. Apparently the industry would rather make it possible for all its members to exaggerate.

A decibel limit that permits intolerable noise levels in perpetuity was set some ten years ago by the Port of New York Authority for its major airports. This maximum was arrived at by determining the noise level that would be no greater than the noise produced by 75 per cent of the large four-engine propeller-driven transports; it protected the aviation industry, not the public. Business Week reported the words of one government official who said that this maximum “renders the surrounding area ‘unfit for human habitation.'” Before this limit was introduced, people were already instituting lawsuits against propeller craft generating less noise than this limit.

Perhaps it was technologically necessary to start with an unsatisfactory limit. But what is the justification for not reducing it in the decade or more since it was introduced? Because of the sheer increase in the number of plane movements, substantial reductions in noise level would be needed to hold the line at the already intolerable existing levels.

The Port of New York Authority justifies its standard by claiming that without it, the jet noises would have been even higher. This is like telling the public it should be grateful it is living surrounded by medium cannon fire rather than big cannon fire.

Industry’s deafness to the need for noise abatement may be described as dollarcusis. It is difficult to “hear” the pitifully weak outcries of an outraged public if every dollar not spent on design for quiet or operations for quiet is seen as a corporate gain. The noise control engineer is either low man on the design totem pole; or kept off the pole altogether. Design for quiet has no tangible sales value.

Economic considerations are not peculiar to the free enterprise system. Attending the Vth International Congress for Noise Abatement in London were several Moscow engineers and physicists working in aviation acoustics. I asked them this question: “In profit-system U.S. the aviation industry justifies not reducing jet noise because it claims such reduction may involve economic penalties in additional operating costs, lower payloads, and so forth. From what little I know of the Soviet jet engines, they may be slightly quieter, but they are no paragons of silence. What is your excuse?”

The one Russian engineer who spoke English grinned sheepishly and replied: “Operating economy.”

Product design is a management responsibility. Management evades design for quiet, choosing to design as if human beings had no ears, or homes were located in the middle of silent deserts. Listen to that kitchen blender. Designed to look as beautiful as a space ship, it sounds like the launching of one.

At a safety conference, no less, I asked a manufacturer’s representative what was being done to reduce the noise of his line of hand drills and other extremely noisy do-it-yourself tools. At first he didn’t understand what I was driving at. I patiently explained about noise.

“Oh, noise. We don’t give it a thought. If we did, it would probably be 342nd on our list of priorities.”

During a meeting with Detroit automobile executives I raised the question of vehicular noise.

“We have done a great job on the passenger car,” replied one of the executives.

“If the driver buys an air-conditioned model and keeps the windows closed,” I observed. “That is not the noise I mean. I mean the noise that hits the pedestrian and the public at home.”

“Oh, you mean spectator noise. Why, we’re not doing anything.”

It is unfortunate that noise is associated with large cities, New York especially. Unfortunate, because one finds a dislike of large cities both in industry and in government, not to mention in some conservation circles.

Pollster Lou Harris reported that the American people are aware there is an urban crisis, but couldn’t care less. The Washington attitude is said to be, if anyone is dumb enough to live in New York City, let him pay the penalty. Columnist Jack Anderson has explained, “The old men who run Congress come chiefly from rural areas…Most of the powerful committee chairmen come from rural towns and do not understand big-city needs.” Even city planning commissioners accept stress as a normal part of city living. They permit center-city aviation because aviation progress must not be stopped, and any environmental side-effects are par for city life.

Business executives who live in the quiet suburbs could choose to design for quiet, but they do not regard themselves as their brother’s keeper. They see no reason for concern for the quality of urban environments. And they have little respect for the urban environment.

An automobile industry representative, who himself lives in a small town, complained that New York City’s noise left him tired and out-of-sorts. When I tried to defend the city, he stopped me. “You’ve got to admit,” he said, “that New York has its unique unpleasant sound.”

I took him to a giant construction site. He winced as he walked by the roaring compressors.

“Those noisy engines are not manufactured in New York City.”

Next I took him on a tour of East 57th Street, site of some of the best-known specialty shops in the world, and also a main crosstown traffic artery. The poor man winced again, and again, at the horns and the general traffic din.

“It’s the automotive industry that’s responsible for most of the unpleasant street noises of New York and other cities. Give us quieter buses and trucks, sensible auto horns, and quiet engines for compressors, and we would give you and other visitors a more pleasant environment. The men who dictate our environment live in the suburbs of Detroit.”

Dollarcusis is rife in the air conditioning industry. “The engineers,” wrote Sheldon Wesson in Home Furnishings Daily, “are under great pressure to cut down weight, size and price, with the result that the acoustical properties are largely shoved aside. It would mean virtually redesigning all units on the market to make the consumer willing to pay for both reduced noise and cooling comfort.” Window units are sold for cooling, not comfort. The president of Lennox Industries acknowledges, “There is no secret to making air conditioning equipment quiet. It simply takes room and money. Design decisions are as much economic as they are scientific.”

The eyes have it, and the ears get it.

The goal of industry is not noise reduction, but noise complaint reduction, or as it is known in acoustic circles, “acceptability.”

Acceptability does not mean desirability. It means as loud as one can get away with. Acceptability means as noisy as possible with the fewest complaints.

The acceptability criterion punishes large numbers of human beings. Professor Raymond A. Bauer, of the Harvard School of Business Administration, an investigator of the sonic boom and other acoustic phenomena, reported that “the concept of ‘tolerable’ has a connotation that some may find intolerable. It implies a clear acceptance that the phenomenon involved is unpleasant, but not unpleasant beyond a certain point. In practice this has, in the past, meant the point at which citizen reaction has been intolerable to public officials…The National Academy of Engineering report suggests that perhaps one might want to substitute the concept of ‘comfort’ for that of tolerability…As an old hand at survey research, I can guarantee that if you ask people what level of noise they consider to be ‘comfortable’ and what level they consider to be ‘tolerable,’ the latter noise will have a higher level than the former.”

One acoustician reports an increase in acceptability by creating a smooth-sounding and continuous artificial background noise level. There is something incongruous in this concept of minimizing some noise by creating constant noise. So little is known about the impact of noise on humans, how can we permit ourselves to be subjected to a lifetime of constant “low-level” noise?

Yet acceptability remains the goal, not a comfortable environment. And since a basic index of acceptability is complaint activity, a great deal of effort is devoted to techniques for reducing complaints. This goal protects the noisemaker from any significant economic burden.

One important technique of this sort is the social survey. People living in a delineated area are interviewed in an attempt to determine their reactions to specific noises in the area.

One of the first major surveys was conducted in the vicinity of London’s Heathrow Airport in 1961. A sample was selected from the electoral registers (1,731 people) plus 178 people from a list of those who had complained. The 42-question questionnaire contained items designed to discover what the persons interviewed liked and disliked about their neighborhoods; the effect on them of aircraft, and other noise; their attitudes toward the airport and its importance locally; and their attitudes toward noise in general. Background information such as age, sex, and occupation was also obtained. Questions included:

Does the noise of aircraft bother you very much, moderately, a little, or not at all?

Does the noise of aircraft ever:
a) wake you up
b) interfere with listening to TV or radio
c) make the house vibrate or shake
d) interfere with conversation
e) interfere with or disturb any other activity, or bother, annoy, or disturb you in any other way?

Have you ever felt like moving away from this area, and if so why?

Results of such tests are analyzed to show how much noise of a given kind the inhabitants of a given environment can take without serious complaints. Unfortunately, any guidelines developed from such surveys will not be based on a desirable acoustic environment, but on how much people will tolerate; in other words, “acceptability.”

The Federal government sponsors community noise studies to collect attitudinal data from airport communities so that it may predict future reactions when existing airports intensify their activities, or when new airports are built. As part of the Federal jet noise alleviation program NASA is accumulating “behavioral psychometric data,” which are personality profiles of people who live near airports. One contract was given to two University of North Carolina professors who analyzed residents according to characteristics such as:

noise sensitivity
worldly exposure (income, education, air travel experience)
high anxiety
anti-aviation
isolationist (negative attitude to growth and commerce)
pragmatist
passivity
phobia (generalized anxiety about flying and fear from sounds of aviation overhead)
idealist
conservative
imperturbable
complainer (tends to complain or protest about noise)

Are these two objective academics who are studying a problem of human beings, or–two investigators who started with a built-in prejudice that all who complain are “different” in some way?

The main purpose of these studies is to sharpen the tools for molding a positive attitude toward noise.

The test subjects, incidentally, were exposed to a noise level of 82 decibels because it was discovered that at a higher level–say, 90 decibels–virtually all subjects found the stimuli so annoying that ordinary psychological factors would cease to be part of the picture. In other words, whether one has a high or a low sensitivity–noise is noise.

United States government studies of public reaction to the sonic boom, supervised by NASA for the FAA, have been severely criticized. Oklahoma City, site of one of the major testing programs, is a center of aviation activity, with a direct stake in aviation development. FAA’s Gordon M. Bain foresaw criticism of what appears to be a loaded sample. In his preface to the National Opinion Research Center report on the tests, he wrote: “Another objection to findings in this report may be based on the nature of the population of Oklahoma City. An estimated one-third of all residents have ties with aviation, and therefore might be presumed to possess an ingrained bias pertinent to this public reaction study. The report found that such connections did not appear to bias reactions to sonic boom, but there will inevitably be those who question this conclusion.”

Not only is the sample suspect, so is the test itself. The booms were the less intense ones of the Air Force supersonic bombers, the shock was not unexpected, the public was carefully informed of the number of booms per day, it was given assurance of safety precautions, and finally the public knew that tests would be stopped, they would not go on for a lifetime.

In tests at Edwards Air Force Base, the subjects were paid by the hour to knit or read, and then, after a warning signal, told to record whether the subsonic or the supersonic flyover was more acceptable. Dr. Lundberg points out that the more appropriate phrasing of the question would have been, “Which noise is least acceptable.”

When the FAA wanted to arrive at a goal for a lowered aircraft noise level it was aware that from the community response viewpoint the optimum reduction would be a level equal to that of the community’s ambient (background noise level). Dismissing this goal as impractical at this time, the FAA decided to opt instead only for a 20 PNdB reduction. (PNdB, or Perceived Noise Decibel, is a calculated decibel that attempts to measure annoyance in terms of “noisiness”) They arrived at this number by referring to the work of Bolt, Beranek and Newman which related changes in PNdBs to changes in the attitudes of people in the community. “Levels proposed by the FAA,” reported an FAA official, “…should be sufficient to cause up to 50 per cent of the people to change from a “vigorous response” to a “no response” category…Residual noise will have to be handled by air traffic procedures and compatible land use planning.”

Social surveys show a significant but minority number of complaints. Could one reason be that the noise victim has resigned himself to his fate? Such a defeated person, according to one noise survey specialist, “will often tell the investigator that he actually does not usually hear the noise.” In other words, a good job of public relations preceding a survey virtually guarantees results pleasing to the noisemaker.

It is ironic that as little as the Federal government knows about the effect of noise on animals, it knows more about porcine and bovine reactions to noise than human reactions. Since swine and cows cannot complain for themselves, the farmer, through his powerful lobbies and well-funded Department of Agriculture, does the complaining for them. And government listens. When farmers worried that jet noise troubled their swine, they had no difficulty getting the Federal government to provide the necessary research. Air Force researchers checked for stress and behavioral changes. They obtained electrocardiograms; they made films of behavioral changes during mating and suckling. But when it comes to jet-stressed human beings we do not perform physiological and behavioral studies; no, we stop at opinion surveys and personality profiles. Are we afraid of what we might find out about the impact of jet noise on human beings living near airports?

One of the more subtle stratagems used by the noisemakers to frustrate noise control has been called The Weighting Game by Jim Botsford of Bethlehem Steel. It stems from the seemingly innocent fact that a small group of noise specialists have become more interested in measuring noise than abating it. To the physical scientist, and the psychologist and sociologist who fail to see the total human being, nothing–including human suffering–exists unless it can be quantified and made to fit into a formula.

Acoustical scientists and technologists embarked on a search for the ultimate measurement of the human “annoyance” response to noise. Esoteric “annoyance” measurements and formulae are devised to try to tell the noisemaker how much noise he can make before the victim yells ouch, how much noise he can make before the victim is moved to active protest.

Central to all schemes for measuring “annoyance” is the decibel.

At one time it was believed that loudness was the determining factor in measuring noise. Most anti-noise ordinances were based on common sense–they prohibited noises that could be described as “unreasonably loud.”

With the advent of the decibel meter and its variations, the noise specialist refused to accept the personal complaint of “it’s too loud.” He began to search for a precise formula, a formula to be based not on individual complaints, but on group judgments. The acousticians preferred to wrestle with statistics instead of noise complainers.

Specialists called psychoacousticians started out by trying to quantify the subjective response to noise in terms of loudness. Experiments were devised to try to measure how loud is loud. Juries of listeners were exposed to various levels of noise and asked to rate them as soft or loud, or to compare two sounds as equal or differing in loudness.

As the field of psychoacoustics developed, it was discovered that loudness is only one of many factors that make noise annoying. There followed a proliferation of decibel varieties that continues to this day.

Not content with the pristine decibel, already only an indirect measurement of sound energy, the acoustic power structure, under government contract, embarked on a search for the acoustic holy grail, the ultimate decibel and decibel formula of its limited concept of the human response to noise.

The measurement specialists made a new “discovery”: it was not loudness that determined annoyance, but “noisiness.” Thus was born the family of perceived noise decibels (PNdBs). Developed originally to apply to aircraft noise, this family is a fertile one; its apparently well-financed promoters come up with one refinement after another. For example, we are told that annoyance varies with the number of noise exposures (such as the number of airplane flyovers), and with the degree of pure tones in a given noise. To account for these variables, the experts have developed a variety of effective perceived noise decibels.

The goal in the use of PNdBs is not a comfortable environment, but one with a minimal number of complaints. The modified PNdBs would make it appear, for example, that less annoyance from fewer aircraft flyovers is the same as no annoyance. Will the use of jumbo jets solve the jet noise problem?

There is now an attempt to add a new decibel-weighting to the readings on the sound level meter, the “D” decibel. Acousticians Robert W. Young of the U.S. Navy and Arnold Peterson of the General Radio Company studied this new “improvement” and concluded: “There is no justification for adding D-weighting to the sound level meter. For simple noise reporting and comparisons the public will benefit, at no loss in precision, if only sound level “A” is employed.”

The fragmentation of noise measurement units is what Jim Botsford calls The Weighting Game. Botsford has been sharply critical of this racket in numbers, since he sees such complex measurements as a deterrent to hearing conservation programs in industry. “Methods for estimating the hazard to hearing must be made as simple as possible,” he says. After a thorough study of the various schemes for predicting annoyance, speech interference, and hearing loss, this noise control physicist concluded: “The complex methods currently recommended for appraising the effects of noise on people can be replaced by simpler methods utilizing the readings of a standard sound level meter. The small errors introduced by these substitutions are negligible compared to those inherent in the relationship of noise measurements to human response.” Botsford pulls no punches in describing how the public is paying, in discomfort and in money, to support The Weighting Game. In a report the magazine Sound and Vibration published in October 1969, he wrote:

Human responses to noise can be predicted from sound levels as from any of the more complex noise rating numbers currently recommended…It is highly improbable that the foregoing facts could have escaped discovery under the intense scientific scrutiny that human responses to noise have received. Yet, sound levels are shunned and the development of complicated noise weighting methods continues. This inconsistent and unproductive behavior implies that motivations other than elucidation of human response may spark the investigator’s fervor…The activity related to the interactions of people and noise might really be just a game.

The principal players in The Weighting Game are the Researchers, the Consultants, The Noisemakers, and the Public. Each player has his strategy and his winnings except the Public who loses steadily.

Botsford summarizes the Game in a table:

Player	Strategy	Winnings
Researcher	refines weighting methods endlessly	research contracts, publications, etc.
Noisemaker	lacks information, supports research, waiting for answers	expense of noise abatement postponed
Consultant	helps clients use weightings	fees
Public	wants problem solved	none, pays bill

Referring to this table, he comments: “This program will prove helpful in identifying the players as they are encountered in the field. Masqueraders are quite common in The Weighting Game so, for positive identification of a player, his strategy and winnings must be examined. Often, what appears to be a Researcher will be identified as a Noisemaker by his strategy and his winnings.”

No matter how complex, annoyance measurements remain of limited value. Yaffe and Cohen of the Public Health Service state: “While of some value, perceived noise decibels and other annoyance measurements based upon single judgments of the noise stimulus are expected to have only limited usefulness in gauging the complaint potential of a noise. This is due to the many non-acoustical considerations which enter into such judgments.”

Herein is a semantic ploy of the first water, because the uninformed are led to believe that what is being measured is the total human response to noise. But the subjective reaction of annoyance is not the total human response to noise. Conscious annoyance is but a symptom that the human being is disturbed; it is not and cannot be an accurate measure of the extent of that disturbance. (See Chapter 3.)

Loudness, perceived noise, “A” or “D” decibels concentrate on one small aspect of the human response to noise: conscious awareness of irritation. Ignored in the formulae are the effects of noise on sleep, on the emotions, and on the biological processes.

Does it make sense to worry about the nuances of decibels when the receiver is experiencing noise in the 90- and 100-decibel range? Because the prolonged barking of a dog disturbs sleep, we enact ordinances to compel dog owners to keep their pets quiet at night. These anti-barking codes do not specify the size of the dog, or the decibel level of the bark, or even the use of perceived barking dog noise decibels (PBDNdBs). It is accepted that sleep must be protected, and that barking disturbs sleep. Yet when it comes to jet planes or trucks, or air conditioners, all of which can and do disturb sleep, we are asked to wait for the perfect measurement. One of the standing jokes among the noise experts is that the elaborate decibel measurement systems are necessary because the degree of decibel reduction is so minuscule it cannot be detected by simple means!

Enough is known about the physical nature of noise to control it. There is no valid reason for not abating noise first, and measuring it during or afterward.

The methods used to win acceptability for the intense noises of commerce and industry have not worked. Instead, it has become necessary to promote the “final” solution: move the receiver away from the source. “To those who complain of [traffic noise] nuisance,” states a leading acoustical consultant, “there is a reasonable reply. Move.”

So far government is listening to that old noisemaker’s principle: any noise problem, no matter how intense, can be solved by eliminating the people who complain about it.

The aviation industry tells us that economic and technological considerations preclude any significant reduction in jet noise levels, and therefore there is nothing left to do but compel the jet noise victim to move. The euphemism for this “final solution” is compatible land use.

The thinking behind this noise control technique is that jet noise is no problem if it is “acceptable” to a majority. The passenger in the plane is not complaining, and other than a little resentment about hearing loss, aviation personnel tend to “accept” jet noise. The only fly in the acceptability ointment is the permanent resident. The final solution now becomes absurdly simple: remove the resident from a zone around the airport where complaints can be expected to be most acute. Then rezone this former residential area for commerce and industry, and, believe it or not, recreation. Presto, the jet noise complaint problem is solved.

Government is being urged to give local communities grants or loans for repurchasing residential property, and to bring pressure to bear on them to rezone property adjacent to airports. The FAA is recommending exploring the possibilities for condemnation or direct purchase followed by resale for other than residential use.

All other things being equal, it may seem logical to rezone around new airports. The question arises, how much urban and near-urban land can be withdrawn from residential development because of airports (and highways)? Here we see “terminus hocus focus” at work. Jet noise is a problem not only at the immediate approach zone, but under other areas such as where stacking occurs. These areas can be several miles from the airport.

It is not a simple matter to condemn property adjacent to airports and then rezone it. There are problems of governmental jurisdiction, the problem of stretching the interpretation of “eminent domain” to include property at a distance from the airport, and so on.

It is not a simple matter to force residents out of their homes because the area has been designated as too loud.

Sidney Goldstein, general counsel for the Port of New York Authority, states the case against zoning as a panacea quite succinctly:

“One must always consider the grave sociological, political, and human problems that would follow in the wake of any large-scale attempt to relocate elsewhere untold numbers of people who now live in noise-affected communities…In the long run it may be even cheaper–and it’s certainly more worth while–to put money into the development of quieter aircraft than to pay for the costs of acquiring intrinsically worthless easements of flights in ever-increasing numbers throughout the country…The direct approach obviously is to build quieter planes.”

Some idea of what is in store for homeowners near major airports is gleaned from the nationwide plea for help sent out by a Los Angeles homeowners association: “Airport Management is sending a corps of appraisers among the 944 homeowners, going door to door…to persuade them to accept depressed residential prices from the airport…The Los Angeles Planning Commission, urged by the airport authorities, has so far denied [the] right of the individual owners to rezone…The Airport Management’s continued attempts to obtain the homes through the appraiser tactic is pursued despite no legal condemnation action. Tragically, most of these 944 average citizens are ignorant of the law, ignorant of their rights, ignorant of commercial values…”

If this situation is being accurately described, we see a new development, whereby airport management can obtain residential property without condemnation. At least condemnation might bring a fairer price. It may come to where homeowners will be forced to be the ones to fight to have their own land condemned.

Many refuse to take this “final solution” seriously. They believe that the billions of dollars in property values would make such a plan economically impossible for already-built-up areas. But the proponents of compatible land use have an answer: when the area is cleared of residential development, its resale to commerce and industry not only will recoup for the local authority the monies spent on purchasing the condemned property, but will probably earn it a profit. The dispossessed homeowner, who lived for years in a degraded environment, will not participate in this windfall. He will get, like the Los Angeles homeowners, a depreciated market value for residential property.

One of the shocking elements of this “final” solution is the use to which some people are planning to put the rezoned residential property. Mind you, we are talking about property so close to an airport that it is unbearably noisy for human habitation.

What is being recommended is that the residential property be rezoned for commercial, industrial, and recreational use. Forgetting the question of what it means to work under jets at landing or takeoff, what is it we plan to do to the places to which we retreat for recreation and leisure?

A top FAA official, Oscar Bakke, has stated, “Land in the immediate vicinity of airports must of necessity be restricted to uses that are compatible with normal airport operations. Such compatible uses include parks, recreation areas, automobile parking and light industry.”

The solution, it is being suggested, is to reverse the noise victim’s home and his recreational areas. Action to implement this program is already underway. Is a miserably noisy park better than no park at all?

Paradoxically, industry organizes and supports its own noise abatement organizations. While these are helping to create an awareness of noise, they are also used to promote the best interests of the noisemaker, or to promote a market for noise-control products. For example, in the 1940s companies manufacturing acoustic tile formed the National Noise Abatement Council. It was the NNAC that consistently rated Memphis, Tennessee, as the quietest city in the United States because it enforced its horn blowing and muffler laws. When the use of acoustic tile became a commonplace, the Acoustical Materials Association withdrew its support and the organization collapsed in 1960.

In 1959 the aviation industry organized the National Aviation Noise Abatement Council (NANAC), composed of the nation’s airport operators, pilots, airlines, and manufacturers of engines and airframes. In 1968 the airport operators withdrew from NANAC, denouncing the airlines and aircraft manufacturers for laying “a smokescreen over the problem of jet noise.” The Air Line Pilots Association subsequently withdrew financial support because it felt the burden of jet noise reduction was being placed not on quieting the source but on peripheral procedures such as flight operation maneuvers.

The newest industry-oriented group is the National Council on Noise Abatement. Organized in 1968, its advisory committee lists such vested interests as U.S. Steel, International Paper Company, and the Cuna Mutual Insurance Society. Its purpose is to provide a forum for the exchange of information about industrial noise, and noise made by products manufactured in these plants. One of its functions appears to be to serve as a watchdog to alert industry to undesirable government regulations.

Inadvertently or otherwise, industry has succeeded in scuttling what should have been a natural move toward the development of quieter machines and dwelling places.

Whether on earth or in space, the specific province of acoustics, of which noise is one specialty, is the domain of a small group of specialists who literally call the tune we all must listen to. No decibel legislation will be enacted without the direct or tacit approval of these advisors to government and industry.

Scientists themselves can weaken the noise abatement movement. Science and engineering students, according to articles in The New York Times and Physics Today, are not devoted solely to social values; they are as much or even more interested in personal status as other students, and they often reveal an indifference to the welfare of others. In the course of their training the engineers and physicists who will work in acoustics are taught to look with a jaundiced eye at the complaining public. They cannot be expected to take noise seriously when they are taught, by one of their standard reference books, the Handbook of Noise Control, that: “The annoyance produced by some sounds does not mean that they are bad for health, any more than an unsightly billboard is bad for health.”

For good measure engineers are further taught that neurotics complain more than others but that “one is not justified in ignoring the likes and dislikes of another because he helps psychiatrists to earn a living.” With this kind of indoctrination, which is continued during his professional career, it is not surprising that the noise control worker looks upon protest against noise as the peculiar problem of a peculiar minority; in short, the noise complainer is labeled a kook.

At a meeting of the noise section of the Acoustical Society of America, I asked the assembled noise experts what to advise a couple whose bedroom window was fifteen feet from a neighbor’s two window air conditioner units operating day and night, year-round. This couple’s physician had recommended sedation, and I thought these experts might have a more practical answer. They did.

“Tell ’em to buy an air conditioner for themselves.”

I later received a letter from one of the more understanding members of that audience who apologized for the cynical behavior of his colleagues, to whom this illustration of human suffering had been a big joke.

Civilian noise abatement does not appeal to many scientists, especially the physical scientists. Physical scientists–especially physicists–appear to dominate the scientific establishment. Next come chemists, engineers, and mathematicians. Conspicuous by their absence from the upper echelons of the science complex are men from the behavioral sciences: anthropology, ecology, sociology, psychology, political science.

In practice the top scientists of government and private sectors are one family, with members of the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee often holding interlocking positions with the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the newer National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Any President of the United States is both captor and captive of this scientific establishment. Though he decides the goals, the scientists, through their influence and “expert” opinions, mold his decisions. Dissenters from orthodox scientific or Federal policies are kept out.

It is difficult to imagine that the research priorities of the nation have not been influenced by this closely knit complex.

Therefore, as long as Science tells the public, and Congress, that everyday noise is a mere nuisance we must put up with, we will not get the research we need to arouse us to action, and we will not get the legislation that will be needed.

Though there is no formal acoustic establishment, the small size of the acoustic world, the control of policy by a few academic and private consultants, the allocation of government contracts, all tend to create the semblance of an “in” group, or establishment. The main pipeline for noise knowledge between the private and government sectors is the National Research Council Committee on Hearing, Bioacoustics and Biomechanics (formerly the Armed Services Committee…), referred to as CHABA.

Why CHABA has had little, if anything to offer the public is indicated by its sponsors and its function. The sponsors are the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Departments of Health, Education and Welfare and of Housing and Urban Development are affiliated with CHABA, but not as sponsoring members. Composed of acoustic and noise control experts, CHABA “gives direction and advice toward the solution of acoustic problems submitted by [its] sponsoring agencies.” In other words, CHABA serves the military and space, not the civilian earth agencies. There are some who would like to see CHABA pay more attention to the civilian noise problem, but without a radical restructuring it is unlikely CHABA would have its heart in the abatement of everyday noise.

In 1967 I had the opportunity of observing for myself at least one example of how some scientists inadvertently help to perpetuate the noisy status quo. The event was a “Seminar for Science Writers on Noise Pollution” sponsored by the American Institute of Physics. Those in attendance were members of the National Association of Science Writers. This is what they were told about noise and health by the medical speaker, a past officer of CHABA:

On the sonic boom: “Not in the ball park as to injury. Pounds per square inch not significant enough when compared with that of artillery pressures. Sonic boom won’t hurt you. Maybe you’ll get hit by a piece of flying glass, but not if you jump fast enough.”

Bodily harm: “There is hazardous noise exposure that causes hearing loss. But this type of injurious effect has little to do with noise pollution and is of no concern to the community. It is an industry problem and industry is solving it.”

Noise pollution: “Noise pollution is the community noise problem–it is a problem of intrusion, of speech interference, and annoyance. There is inadequate information on the significance of speech interference and sleep disturbance. Annoyance is psychological, all in the mind.”

Effect on body chemistry; endocrine glands: “That’s animal research.”

One writer asked if the doctor wasn’t concerned because of the additional stresses to which human beings were now being subjected, plus the new ones around the corner. He answered that the human being, as proven by history, has tremendous capabilities for adapting, and that he had every confidence it would adapt to noise stress.

This credo, that the human being can and must adapt to the machine, and not the reverse, helps maintain a noisy world.

Lack of progress in understanding the complex human response to noise is due, in part, to the fact that hearing-oriented specialists dominate the field. These men have consistently downgraded the extra-auditory impact of noise. They take a dim view of those who claim that everyday noise is more serious than a mere nuisance. Some become emotional and let fly at any who dare to challenge their “expert” opinions. At the National Conference on Noise as a Public Health Hazard, one otologist presented a paper covering questions frequently asked about the effects of noise. A brief excerpt illustrates how this “dispassionate” scientist reacts to critics of noise:

Finally, is it true that we are continually surrounded by ultrasound–sound too high in frequency to be heard–and so as a result we are being deafened and maddened by this sound we cannot even hear, as some fanatics claim? I trust the answer to this question is implicit in the way the question was phrased.

If these men are so secure in their belief that noise is not a serious problem, except as they define it, why do they get so upset at their critics?

I had occasion to witness a histrionic display of intolerance of noise critics, at an institute for occupational hearing loss operated for industrial hygienists and factory medical directors. One of the speakers was a Fellow of several scientific and professional societies and a consultant on toxicology, air pollution, water pollution, noise, and environmental health. As part of his lecture he had repeated the traditional doctrine that the only damage from noise was hearing loss, as defined. He was upset because the public was told there may be other forms of harm. To illustrate how the public was being given distorted information, he held up a copy of a popular household magazine sold in food markets. He made it very clear this was not a scientific magazine. He became more and more emotional as he read excerpts from the article that suggested noise was a health hazard, that kitchens were unduly noisy, and that the inner ear was like a snail. This anatomical description was as much as he could take, and with a dramatic gesture he ripped out the three pages of the offending article and said: “Now this magazine is fit to come into my home.”

As calmly as possible I asked him this carefully-worded question: “Is it your contention that, other than hearing loss from specific exposures, noise has no significant non-auditory health effects?”

He gasped at this unexpected question, and while he fumbled for a reply, the institute’s medical director rephrased my question.

“Baron wants to know if it isn’t true that noise gives you heart attacks, and ulcers, causes divorce…”

Noise is closely linked to the same sickness that keeps us from solving the human problems of housing, education, civil rights, unemployment, and health care, while at the same time solving the difficult and expensive problems of faster air transportation, a national highway system, sophisticated weaponry, and a scheduled route to the moon.

Undoubtedly influenced by the carefully nurtured idea that noise is a mere nuisance, municipal government typically meets the demand for noise abatement with ignorance, indifference, or arrogance. There have been no policy positions that the human being has the right to sleep, keep from straining his vocal chords, be free from unnecessary distraction. There are no effective ordinances, administrative rulings, guidelines, or even an impartial abatement advisory service.

When a strict law is passed, it is to curb the politically impotent, like ice cream vendors.

It is a rare event for effective anti-noise legislation to be introduced into a city council, even rarer for it to become law, and rarely has it happened in America that an anti-noise law is both meaningful and commonly enforced.

Pet animals are not allowed on the streets without a leash, but undomesticated noisemakers can operate freely on the ground and in the sky. The jackhammer and the rock drill should never have been permitted inside the city limits without a promise of eventual good behavior. The city could, as we will see, move to cut down many of the excessive noises that have become characteristic of larger population centers. It could lobby in Washington to oppose environment-destroying highways and deny land for noisy airports.

Only one municipality, New York City, has so much as an official noise abatement function–so far equipped with responsibility but no authority–and only one other, Honolulu, is contemplating following suit. In between these two cities sit the thousands of indifferent governments, smug in the knowledge that most people believe you can’t fight City Hall.

One would think it impossible for legislators who ignore noise abatement not to alienate constituents. But the legislator can afford to maintain the noisy status quo, because industry and the scientists back him up with their interpretation of noise control. Legislators provide the money for the very research that the noisemaker is able to cite in defense of today’s noise. As we have seen, industry-oriented government actually helps originate and disseminate the propaganda that protects noisemaking by industry. In protecting each other’s self-interest, industry and government are involved in a system that escalates the noise output. On the surface it is hard to understand why former Congressman Kupferman’s bill calling for an office of noise control in HEW could not get out of committee. It set no standards, and in the best tradition of conservative politics, it gave most of the first year’s $3 million budget back to the states and the cities. Could it be that the pro-industry agencies would not like to see a strong, centralized noise abatement function, especially in HEW?

We tend to forget that the day-to-day operation of government, on all levels, is conducted by administrative agencies. Their officials appear content to be misinformed by the noisemaker, especially if his actions mean a larger empire for a given agency. When the acting commissioner of New York’s Department of Marine and Aviation was asked about the impact of a giant STOLport on that city’s environment, he replied that his responsibility was to foster aviation, and what happened to the environment was somebody else’s problem.

There have been illusory exceptions to government callousness. The 1956 noise study situation looked promising when Mayor Wagner initiated the Committee for a Quiet City. After four years of study it reported that noise was so dangerous it could even be a killer. Alarmed by its own conclusions, its funds exhausted, it ended its life with a vigorous campaign against horn honking.

As the years went on, the Federal government heard of noise. While the subway project continued to rattle my windows, the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee received a report from a special Environmental Pollution Panel. “The public should come to recognize individual rights to quality of living, as expressed by the absence of pollution, as it has come to recognize the right to education, to economic advance, and to public recreation.” Marvelous. The Magna Charta for noise abatement. But there was only one specific recommendation for noise abatement, that “the Federal government encourage the development and adoption of codes governing insulation in apartment buildings.”

This lone recommendation for quiet appeared in 1965. As of 1970–nothing.

There is something grotesque about the fact that we spend ten times more on chewing gum than on mental health research, and the fact that the State of New York’s Department of Mental Hygiene could not be authorized $75,000 to study the effects of jet noise on people living near airports. Even research on the hearing problems of children goes begging while scientists in Hawaii are testing tuna for their hearing capabilities.

Several years ago Representative Benjamin S. Rosenthal rebutted the head of the FAA, who had cited to a Congressional subcommittee statistics that gave the impression substantial sums were being spent on engine research: “…The fact Mr. Halaby said we are spending a million and a half dollars for engine research is just a drop in the bucket. Sir, I voted for a $10-million aquarium in the District of Columbia. I have no regrets about it. I think it is a good thing. We did that partially so that fish could have a quiet place to spawn. I think for the perpetuation of the race as I know it, at least in my district* they are entitled to the same thing as the fish–$10 million for the fish and $1.5 million for my people–there is no comparison.”

More than twice as much money–$250,000 a year–is spent annually on research on Bang’s Disease in cattle than on the Public Health Service budget for community and industrial noise control. It is hard to believe that the most powerful nation in the world, the nation with the technological “most,” has a PHS staff of five to handle the occupational noise problems of perhaps 30 million or more workers, plus servicing the cities and the states for community noise problems.

Such Federal activity as there is focuses mainly on the jet noise problem. In 1968 Congress authorized the FAA to certificate aircraft for noise levels and to set criteria for sonic booms. Called the cat and the canary bill by the insiders, in fifteen years or so it may bring into production new aircraft of somewhat quieter levels.

There may be promise in the new Department of Transportation Noise Abatement Office, which under Colonel Charles Foster seems to be serious about tackling a wide spectrum of noise sources, not alone aircraft. Foster set up the first national conference on evaluating transportation noise. He is concerned with motor vehicle noise, and welcomes the input from the concerned citizen.

Another healthy development is the opening of government-sponsored noise control meetings to the public. The presence of the concerned citizen is a reminder that the end product of noise abatement is the human being, and not measurement or machines. If he has done his homework, he can challenge many assumptions and statements that have so far been accepted as gospel. As one example, at a Department of Transportation symposium on evaluating criteria for transportation noise, a spokesman for the automotive industry gave the impression that it was busy tackling the problem of effective noise standards. I asked this simple question:

“The automotive industry once told the City of New York it was setting up a committee to work on standards for the auto horn. That was in 1930. It is now 1969. Has the committee been formed and has it submitted its report?”

You know the stunned answer.

Noise-abatement crusading has its delicious moments, and that was one of them.

* The 8th, Queens, New York.