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Page Eleven of an eleven-page article:
Noise: A Health Problem
United States Environmental Protection Agency

A Final Word

"It is truly a serious problem to escape from noise."
William Dean Howells, American Author

When unwanted sounds intrude into our environment, noise exists. We have all experienced to varying degrees the annoyance and irritation caused by noise. Sometimes this annoyance is brought about by disruption of our sleep or difficulty in falling asleep. At other times, it may be because we have to raise our voices over background noise to be heard or because we are distracted from our activities.

Except for the serious problem of hearing loss, there is no human illness known to be directly caused by noise. But throughout dozens of studies, noise has been clearly identified as an important cause of physical and psychological stress, and stress has been directly linked with many of our most common health problems. Thus, noise can be associated with many of these disabilities and diseases, which include heart disease, high blood pressure, headaches, fatigue and irritability.

Noise is also suspected to interfere with children's learning and with normal development of the unborn child. Noise is reported to have triggered extremely hostile behavior among persons presumably suffering from emotional illness. It is suspected to lower our resistance, in some cases, to the onset of infection and disease.

However, most Americans are largely unaware that noise poses such significant dangers to their health and welfare. The reasons for this lack of awareness are clear. Noise is one of many environmental causes of stress and cannot easily be identified as the source of a particular physical or mental ailment by the layman. Another reason is that biomedical and behavioral research is only now at the point where health hazards stemming from noise can actually be named, even though some specific links have yet to be found.

Dr. William H. Stewart, former Surgeon General, in his keynote address to the 1969 Conference on Noise as a Public Health Hazard, made the following point: "Must we wait until we prove every link in the chain of causation? I stand firmly with (Surgeon General) Burney's statement of l0 years ago. In protecting health, absolute proof comes late. To wait for it is to invite disaster or to prolong suffering unnecessarily. I submit that those things within man's power to control which impact upon the individual in a negative way, which infringe upon his sense of integrity, and interrupt his pursuit of fulfillment, are hazards to public health."

It is finally clear that noise is a significant hazard to public health. Truly, noise is more than just an annoyance.

United States Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Noise Abatement and Control
Washington, DC 20460
August 1978

End of an eleven-part article: Noise - A Health Problem

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