NOISE IN CITIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21937, 22 October 1934, Page 12

NOISE IN CITIES

EFFECT ON EFFICIENCY NEED FOR ABATEMENT LONDON'S "SILENCE ZONES" Attention has been drawn to the large amount of unnecessary noise in a large city by the experiments being conducted in London and elsewheie with "silence zones," where the sounding of motor horns during certain hours is prohibited, and by other expedients being adopted by civic authorities to obtain at least a small period of quietness for city dwellers. A bulletin issued by the Health Department, containing an extract from an overseas public health journal, discusses the questions of the effect of noise on efficiency and whether noise can continue to increase in the cities without disastrous effects. "That noiso is unavoidable where peoplo gather themselves together in communities is a fact as ancient as the man-made institution of cities and towns, but never in the history of the world has there been such a, constant clamour as is produced in modern j cities, or one made up of so many startling, alarm-like elements," states tho article. Question ol Adaptation "To a certain extent we can and do adapt ourselves to tho conditions of noise, but common experience shows that there are limits to this adaptation. Everyone who has tried to sleep through tho hum of after theatre traffic interspersed with nervous tooting of horns, through tho rattle of milk delivery, through the clatter of ash collection—all the noises of a city night—knows that custom docs not mitigate the annoyance caused by noise. "The researches of psychologists so far have been a confirmation of this common experience, usually revealing that noise has been more of a handicap to rest and to work than the average man ever suspected. Ono question has not boon answered in laboratories: What is tho saturation point for city noise—tho point beyond which human adaptation cannot compensate for the tax noise levies 011 the attention, on the energy, and on the relaxation periods? A pragmatic answer is given in the letters sent to the New York Health Department over a period of years complaining of noise in the five boroughs of Greater New York. Effect on Schools "A study of these letters reveals that, while one out of 2o may be -from a crank, the other 24 are from sensible peoplo who have delayed making their complaints until they could endure conditions no longer. One letter, for example, tells of night J noting that had gone on for three months before the people in a neighbouring apartment house decided to complain; another, from the dean of a leading college, protested against the clangour of street traffic that had disturbed a whole term's work in the classrooms 011 tho exposed side of the buildings; and school principals had figures to prove the slowing-up of the whole year's work by the constant disturbance of recitations by noise from outside. The majority of the complaints show that stable, serious people are disturbed by noise to tho point where they feel that they cannot adapt themselves to it. Whether or not noise has reached its worst proportions at this time, it surely has reached a point where something must be done to give people rolief from it—something more than the abating of individual noises when and as complaints are made of them. "Many people never have a chance to recover from tho effects of one group of noises before they are exposed to another group. Already noises, or rather the causes of noise, are so closely interwoven with our economic and industrial lifo that it will take the combined ingenuity of builders, acoustical engineers, automobile builders and lawyers to change present conditions without working hardship 011 any group in the community. However, the fact that large numbers of peoplo undoubtedly suffer intensely from noise is sufficient for all reasonable persons to support measures to diminish this nuisance. So much of the hat m is done by individual thoughtlessness that it seems reasonable to hope that real reform could be brought about by personal consideration for others."