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The not-so-silent killer

The world is getting louder and louder – and it’s taking a toll on our health.

Two studies this week found that living in close proximity to aircraft noises substantially raises your risk of both hospital admission and death from heart disease and stroke.

This is not, unfortunately, news. For years the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that transportation noise is becoming an increasingly serious problem.

In 2011 a report by the WHO and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre tried to quantify the consequences of this problem on the urban population of Western Europe by looking at all the published research.

It found that across the board around 1.8% of heart attacks in Western Europe are attributable to noise. But in places with denser populations and more background noise, the risk was greater. For example, in Germany around 2.9% of heart attacks can be attributed to noise.

Overall it found that, in the EU alone, “at least 1 million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise”. That’s a staggering figure.

Any other health problem of this magnitude would bring with it…a call for a committee to produce a paper, to suggest attendees for a colloquium, to tease out which are the most important issues to be put on an agenda for a proposed summit, to take place in three years’ time…

I am, of course, being cynical.

But the point is, that action on health issues, especially when they require a challenge to notions of ‘progress’ and prevailing economic structures, can be frustratingly slow.

I was amazed to find out that in 1969, at just such a summit, the then US Surgeon General called for swift action by the US government, pointing to existing research on the link between noise and multiple health problems such as high blood pressure, headaches and heart disease.

Nothing’s been done. That’s nearly 45 years of procrastination.

Things are not much better in the UK. With the publication of these studies officials at Heathrow – the UK’s busiest airport – and government departments say they are “looking at” the problem (whilst still planning for yet another London airport to be built).

I have little faith that our leaders will do much more than continue to “look at” the data. Acting on it would challenge too many sacred cows. But the story reminded me of how important silence is for our health and sanity.

Our ‘acoustic ecology’ – like so many of our other ecologies – is desperately out of balance.

Very often in this noisy world we try to take control of what seems like an uncontrollable situation – in this instance by replacing one intrusive soundscape with another of our own choosing. I’m as guilty as anyone of plunging my noise cancelling headphones into my ears and turning up the volume. But this is a poor coping strategy and really this kind of displacement lets regulators, who should be doing a better job, off the hook.

Most of us don’t consider moments of silence as important as a regular workout or a healthy diet. And yet constant noise can trigger our ‘fight-or-flight’ response – a flood of hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine – that keeps us constantly on the alert. If our bodies don’t get the downtime they need, this perpetual state of alertness can, over time, damage our immune system, on our nerves and our organs.

Strategies like mindfulness meditation can help us to turn down some of the noise ‘out there’, but whether you live along a flight path or near a noisy road or just work in a noisy place, it’s important to develop habits and find places that take you away from the clamour.

Until we learn to value peace and silence as essential to our well-being, we have no hope of ensuring that our regulators do their part to turn down the noise.

Pat Thomas, Editor