How noise can take years off your life
We are all annoyed by the stomping of our upstairs neighbors, a blaring ambulance that wakes us from our sleep, a barking dog during a Zoom call.
But can these everyday noises ever go from being merely annoying to being really dangerous?
My colleagues just published a fascinating project exploring how obnoxious noise can take years off your life, a largely unrecognized health threat that increases Americans’ risk of hypertension, stroke, and heart attacks.
When we hear the whooshing noise of a highway or the thunder of a low-flying airplane, the noise alerts the stress-sensing center in our brain, which then triggers a cascade of reactions in our body that, over time, can be taken seriously. toll on our health.
While we think we get used to these environmental sounds after a while, the data actually shows the opposite: repeated exposure makes people more sensitive to noise, reducing our tolerance for unpleasant noises and essentially making the bad effects worse.
“Noise is worth worrying about,” said Emily Baumgaertner, who led the reporting. “The relationship between sound and health looks pretty linear on a plot. The louder your environment is, the higher your risk of heart disease, heart attack and even heart-related death.
Sound levels are measured in decibels, and according to the World Health Organization, average road traffic noise above 53 decibels or average aircraft noise above about 45 decibels is associated with adverse health effects. About one-third of the US population lives in areas with average noise levels at least as high.
It’s not just a big city problem. Emily and a group of our colleagues traveled to rural Mississippi and suburban neighborhoods in California and New Jersey, as well as New York City, to measure exposure to noise. The constant noise in, say, an apartment next to a highway might seem like a bigger problem, but scientists suspect that jarring noises that usually interrupt quieter environments may actually be more harmful to our health.
Emily, who lives in Los Angeles, told me about a visit to Point Loma in San Diego, where jets fly over about 280 times a day. At a high school less than a mile from the San Diego International Airport, noisy interruptions are so ingrained in everyday life that students have their own term for when airplane noise gets so loud it stops classroom discussion: the Point Loma -pause.
Emily remembered standing in the kitchen of a house in nearby Bankers Hill when a plane flew overhead and thought she could feel the roar in her bones.
“My ears were fine,” she said. “It was the way the long, steady waveform of engine noise moved along and pierced through windows and walls as if they weren’t even there. That’s what helped bring out the systemic cardiovascular threats of low-frequency sound. You can close your house, but you never really get out.”
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Where we travel
Today’s tip comes from Barrie Moore, who lives in Redwood City, on the San Francisco Peninsula:
“One of my favorite places to visit is Edgewood Park and Nature Preserve at Redwood City. Edgewood is known for its extraordinary biodiversity and dozens of wildflower species that bloom each spring. April is usually the best month to see the most flowers. There are several hiking trails that wind through oak forests, serpentine grasslands, and chaparral habitats.
As you climb the rolling hills, you’ll be rewarded with panoramic views of San Francisco Bay to the east and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west. There is also a cute nature center – open on weekends – a native plant garden and a large picnic area. Edgewood is a little gem just minutes from the heart of Silicon Valley!”
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We will share more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.
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And before you go, good news
Kairan Quazi was always at the forefront.
By the age of 2, he was speaking in complete sentences. When he was in kindergarten, he treated classmates to stories he heard on NPR. He went to community college when he was 9.
Kairan, who lives in Pleasanton, is expected to graduate this month from Santa Clara University School of Engineering — and he’s only 14. He already has a job as a software engineer at SpaceX, That reports the Los Angeles Times.