The World Health Organization last month issued a new version of its guidelines on noise risk, which assesses five types of noise risk common in daily life and sets safety limits on human health for different types of noise.
The guide updated the 2009 edition, adding wind turbines and recreational noise to the previous edition, which covered road traffic, rail and aviation noise. With the publication of this report, the topic of noise pollution has once again entered the field of vision.
So, how do you tell if a sound is noise pollution? What are the hazards of noise pollution?
From a physical point of view, noise is made up of random, irregular combinations of sounds of different frequencies and intensities. But it is not enough to judge whether a sound belongs to noise or not only from the point of view of physics. Subjective factors also play a very important role.
For example, beautiful music is music to those who are enjoying it, but it may be noise to those who are studying, resting or concentrating on a problem, so even if it is the same sound. When people are in different states and moods, there will be different subjective judgments about them.
From a physiological point of view, those who interfere with people’s rest, learning sound collectively known as noise. Noise pollution occurs when noise adversely affects people and the surrounding environment.
According to epidemiological studies conducted by WHO in European countries, noise pollution has become another environmental factor that affects human health after air pollution.
Excessive exposure to noise pollution not only seriously affects mental health, but also increases the risk of heart disease and other diseases.
According to reports, lingering in the ear of a variety of noise will make people restless, difficult to fall asleep, so that the mood fidgety, causing insomnia, thereby affecting work and study.
Even if 40, 50 decibels of noise interference, people will be from a deep sleep into a semi-sleeping state; and 70, 100 decibels of sound can make people upset, not focused, or even cause accidents more than 120 decibels, will lead to complete deafness.
In addition, a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Hypertension showed that noise exposure may be a risk factor for hypertension and that the higher the noise, the higher the risk of hypertension.
The analysis included 32 relevant observational epidemiological studies covering nearly 265000 subjects.
Summary analysis showed that people who lived or worked in a noisy environment had a 62% higher risk of developing hypertension than the general population. The researchers also found a dose-response relationship between noise exposure and the risk of hypertension, with a 6 per cent increase in the risk of hypertension for every 10 decibels of noise exposure.
So how do we protect ourselves from noise in our lives?
- Reduce or reduce the sources of noise pollution, such as in the workplace, enhance the isolation of noise sources;
- In the family decoration reasonable allocation of drilling and other work time, not lunch break time and night construction;
- When driving on the road, avoid whistling for a long time and reduce the noise.
It should be noted that noise is harmful to human body in many aspects. If the intensity of noise can not be reduced in daily life, it is necessary to strengthen the awareness of self-protection and reduce the time in the noise environment.
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