STREET NOISES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 1 October 1927, Page 11

STREET NOISES

SOURCE OF FATIGUE. NORMAL PEOPLE AFFECTED. In due time doctors and the city health authorities will doubtless attack the problem of street noises for they will realise before anyone'else the injurious effects of traffic noise as a source of part of their fatigue at the end of a day in bedlam, but many, whose nervous system are affectedl equally, do not realise that noise as much as visible strain is responsible. A correspondent of the London “Times," who has pondered the subject, compares the action of noise and of bad air on the nerves and conscious ness of the victims. People in a badly ventilated room notice at first that the air is vitiated, after a time they breathe the foul air with little or no apparent discomfort. Nevertheless, they are certain to feel a gradual depression due to the poison they inhale. Similarly, people inured to the clang and rattle of the city do not appear to suffer from it but they are persons worn by it without being conscious of the primary cause of their fatigue. An illustration from the writings of an English economist is cited: “The fact that noise does not produce any visible effect on the human body possibly blinds the general public to the injury that it inflicts. We can all of us see the damage done if a man gets a punch in the face which gives him a black eye, but we do not see the permanent injury done to human nerves by the constant noise to which we are all subject under modern conditions of life.’’ With the normal person this is probably true. But in the case of invalids, convalescents in hospitals, infants and children the effects are often as easily observable as an outer discoloration. To them the passing traffic, tooting, twittering, screaming, clanging, is as “sensible to feeling as to sight." The sick do not improve rapidy when they are subject to the constant shock of grinding sound, and babies are cross and ailing unless they get quiet hours for healthful sleep. When cases we see recuperation delayed and sometimes the life of a patient dependent on silence, it is easier to understand how normal people are affected by noise, even when they do not eomplain of it or feel its effects immediately.