The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1928. THE PLAGUE OF NOISES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1928. THE PLAGUE OF NOISES.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resittanoc, For the future in the distance. And the good that we oan do.

The rapid development of labour-saving devices and of mechanical means of transit and transport in recent years has introduced into the conditions of modern life a factor non-existent or barely noticeable hitherto — the element of constant, discordant and nerve-racking noise. Quite apart from the discomfort thus inflicted on the members of every civilised community, there is no doubt that the effects of this ceaseless and distracting din upon the nervous system are baneful and destructive. So serious has this evil become in densely-peopled countries that an agitation is going on all over the world to secure some abatement of it by municipal or government action, and medical authorities everywhere are raising warning voices against the dangers to which everyone is exposed by the maintenance of these abnormal and injurious conditions.

Quite recently a well-known authority on mental diseases, Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, made a public protest against "the thoughtless infliction of harassing artificial anguish of a most disturbing character" upon the unfortunate residents along high roads, where motor traffic is constantly passing. The needless use of the horn and the exhaust is the chief abuse to which this expert draws attention; and even these noises, he mean headache, restlessness, sleeplessness, and to the sick and delicately organised even acute nervous agony; while the concentration necessary for mental work is rendered quite impossible. In similar terms Professor Spooner, of the London Polytechnic, has declared that the present age will go down in history as "notorious for uncontrolled, devastating din that tortured the thinkers, deprived aountless invalids and workers of recuperative sleep, and shortened the lives of countless sufferers."

About three months ago the British Medical Association, at its annual meeting, passed unanimous resolutions drawing the attention of the Government to the dangerous effects of noise on public health, and the Home Secretary in Parliament made a sympathetic reference to the subject. But much more is needed than sympathy to effect any radical change in these conditions. Indeed, to such dimensions has the evil grown that it is difficult to imagine how it can be extirpated without completely transforming the commercial and industrial conditions df modern life. Professor Spooner, who has devoted a great deal of attention .to this subject, has analysed at length, in the "Nineteenth Century" and other periodicals, the constituent elements in the universal and unending chaos of noises by which the nerves of civilised humanity are now distracted. Railways, tramways, motor cars, motor lorries, and motor cycles supply the groundwork, and the variations are worked in by pneumatic drills, mechanical plate-layers and roadmenders, and, in all great cities, a running accompaniment of vendors of various goods, barrel organs, and itinerant musicians.

It might be thought that in the comparatively young countries on this side of the world these abominable disturbances could hardly have developed yet to any serious extent. But Sydney has been described by competent observers as the noisiest city in the world; Melbourne has been driven to adopt a series of most drastic regulations to diminish street noises; and even Auckland in its own small way sometimes does its best to. make life unendurable and mental work impossible for its citizens after the fashion of more famous centres oversea. Yet it is maintained by those who have investigated this problem on scientific lines that in modern cities unnecessary noises could be reduced from 60 to 80 per cent without any material or financial loss. Professor Spooner has stated that under existing conditions the capacity for clear thinking, hard work and energetic action is constantly weakened "by the incessant if unconscious strain imposed upon the nervous system by noisy traffic." Accidents and illnesses due to deafness and nervous prostration are common consequences of working "in an atmosphere of distracting din"; and the same authority, reporting to the American International Comjnittee on Industrial Fatigue, has computed the economic wastage from these causes at a million pounds a week in Britain alone. 1 Such statistical estimates must of course be conjectural. But there is unanswerable evidence to support the contention of the scientists that constant noise is harmful to the brain and the nervous system, and therefore to the mind and the health even of those who are unconscious of their "own injuries; and it is time for a concerted attempt to be made throughout the civilised world to grapple with this great and growing evil.