Noise of modern life blamed for thousands of heart deaths
· Stress of exposure adds to risks, says WHO report
· Light traffic is enough for chronic levels at night
- The Guardian
- Thursday August 23 2007
Deepak Prasher, professor of audiology at University College London, told the New Scientist magazine: "The new data provide the link showing there are earlier deaths because of noise. Until now, noise has been the Cinderella form of pollution and people haven't been aware that it has an impact on their health."
The WHO's working group on the Noise Environmental Burden on Disease began work on the health effects of noise in Europe in 2003. In addition to the heart disease link, it found that 2% of Europeans suffer severely disturbed sleep because of noise pollution and 15% can suffer severe annoyance. Chronic exposure to loud traffic noise causes 3% of tinnitus cases, in which people constantly hear a noise in their ears.
Research published in recent years has shown that noise can increase the levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenalin in the body, even during sleep. The longer these hormones stay in circulation around the bloodstream, the more likely they are to cause life-threatening physiological problems. High stress levels can lead to heart failure, strokes, high blood pressure and immune problems.
"All this is happening imperceptibly," said Prof Prasher. "Even when you think you are used to the noise, these physiological changes are still happening."
The WHO came to its figures by comparing households with abnormally high exposure to noise with those in quieter homes. It also studied people with problems such as coronary heart disease and tried to work out if high noise levels had been a factor in developing the condition. This data was then combined with maps showing the noisiest European cities.
According to the WHO guidelines, the noise threshold for cardiovascular problems is chronic night-time exposure of 50 decibels (dB) or above - the noise of light traffic. For sleep disturbance, the threshold is 42dB, for general annoyance it is 35dB, the sound of a whisper.
Ellen Mason, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Our world is undoubtedly getting busier and noisier. Some people find noise pollution more stressful to live with than others do. Noise cannot directly kill us, but it may add to our stress. Occasionally, stressful events can trigger a heart attack in someone with underlying heart disease. We know that stressed people are more likely to eat unhealthily, exercise less and smoke more, and these can increase the risk of developing heart disease in the first place."
Mary Stevens, policy officer at the National Society for Clean Air, said of the study's results: "We welcome this because one of the problems with noise is that it's one of the areas that local authorities get most complaints about and it's a big draw on their resources. But, unlike air quality, it hasn't been taken that seriously policy-wise because there [wasn't] the link between noise and health."
Ms Stevens said that there were many options for reducing noise. Traffic could be quietened if more cars used low-noise tyres and councils installed low-noise road surfaces, for example. And coordinating roadworks by utility companies would also prevent the proliferation of potholes, another source of noisy traffic.
The EU has already issued a directive that obligates European cities with populations greater than 250,000 to produce digitised noise maps showing where traffic noise and volume is greatest. "[The research] all supports work going on at the moment to manage traffic noise, which is driven by the environmental noise directive," said Ms Stevens.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/23/sciencenews.uknews
18 comments:
Tell us now oh wise one Lisa where wind turbines will sit in the decibel range. Don't go and lie to your followers and say it is above 50 Db, because you know that it sits around what the WHO has declared minor annoyance, WHICH IN NO WAY CAN BE LINKED TO THE HEALTH RISKS OUTLINED BY THIS REPORT!
Thank you for producing something that for once shows the truth.
Sound is a pressure fluctuation...
compression then decompression.
Low frequency ultrasonic sound created by wind turbine blade rotation creates a constant humm or vibration or alternating forces above or below the ambiant pressure of the atmosphere from this. These are very powerful generators of this type of sound.
You are bag of 3/4's water content.
Water is compressible.
It is not unconceivable of this low frequency vibrating and resonating force as
...squeezing your brain against your skull cavity
...expanding your lungs when your trying to exhale
...expanding your heart while it is tryimg to contract and pump
...squeezing the capillaries/veins so you don't distribute blood to your cells normally efficiently
...squeezing your cells and their contents out of normality
...squeezing your eyeballs in their sockets
...playing havoc with your sensory nerves as it changes the pressure on your skin
...stressing out your mind many times a second for many hours per day for many days per week for 52 weeks a year for the rest of your life while it constantly tries to adjust to this and keep you functioning and healthy
It is not as much the level as it is the constant repetitive resonating capability of these forces which can do the damage in the long term and making life for those living in their equally resonating houses a health hazard.
You've obviously missed the point of this WHO report. It states that at 35 Db sound is just a general annoyance a whisper even. Tell me then at what Db would this wind farm operate within the 1Km distance. It is in the general annoyance category, which cannot be categorically linked to neagative health impacts. Sound is a pressure fluctuation that is measured in decibels. If sound is between 35 and 42 Db you are not going to get sick and this is where the wind farm will be. Come on folks lets get with reality here!
I chose to live here because of the natural beauty and serenity, not to be generally annoyed on a non-stop basis.
All of you living on the gulf shore might as well sell your places now wile you can still get some thing for them if you can.Because after the mills are in you wont be able to give them away.
one of the fundemental tenets of physics states that water is highly incompressible.
bag of mostly water
they are not mills, they are turbines. Look it up
-one of the physical tenets of physics states that-"Sound is a vibration that travels through an elastic medium as a wave. The speed of sound describes how much distance such a wave travels in a given amount of time. The speed varies with the medium employed (for example, sound waves move faster through water than through air), as well as with the properties of the medium, especially temperature"...
....as thru a bag of heated water commonly "enclosing" living matter!
Humans are not bags of water you numbskull!
We are a lot more denser, but to find out for yourself why don't you put a speaker on your belly and have someone stand behind you. If they hear the sounds from the speaker better when the speaker is on your belly than your argument is true, if they do not than you will have to start over again.
By the way the crap you are passing around town is some of the worst proganda bologne that I have ever read. You gotta stop lying and using misonformation as a means to getting support for your movement.
Lawsuits are unaffordable as any fool well knows. Even the "wins" are huge financial losses. This fact is what makes corporations like AWPC so cocky and uncaring.
recent theories on bags of water and numbskulls!
by
"We are a lot more denser"
or should that read
"we are a lot more denser "
by
numbskulls
Yes,i'm with an elite group of paratroop propaganda commandos.
We swoop in under the cover of darkness usually when your watching "Canadian idol" and sneak around putting up windmill propaganda on church doors,in public washrooms and in school yards by the swings.Then we hide in the bushes and disguise ourselves as lobster fisherman and go out to sea in the morning where we get picked up by a wind powered submarine by our beloved leaders-the" NUMBSKULL SECT".
BEWARE we will be in a town near you in the near future!
After readng the original article, I searched heart attack rates and found that they have remained the same in North America since 1993. While smoking cessation may have had an effect , along with diet and exercise factors, I certainly look at this survey with some scepticism.
Given my doubts, it is interesting to see that WHO standardfs are higher than wind farm levels in Sweden, Demark, Nova Scotia, the US and PEI When wind farms are actually monitered, They always come in under recommended levels. The article, after all, indicates that in Europe, where wind turbines are more common, noise level concerns from the WHO deal only with city traffic.
Just for fun , I googled refrigerator db level. 40 db!!! This is twice as loud as WHO sleepyime recomendations. Well, I for on, will not get rid of my fidge even if the excessive noise stress is going to give me a heart attack. After all, my beer lives in my fridge( but not for long).
My brother was here from Ottawa the other day. With grins and giggles he asked if I knew where the Anne Murray memotia
windmills were. Seems that reaction to Anne in the Ottawa Citizen was less than positive. I told him that in my opinion if a woman of her advanced years doesn't want to look at windmills while playing golf its time she moved on from the miniature course up to the adult level. His comments,though, made me google. The Truro paper thought it was pretty silly. The comments in the Chronicle Herald said go nuclear (lots of money in lobsters with 4 claws?). A Manitoba and an Alberta blog seemed to think she is a spoiled NIMBY. Not much support Anne: sorry.
John McManus
John and others:
Take a look all across Europe, the US and Ontario. Many communities were all starry-eyed with this bicycle technology and could not understand why people were opposed. The turbines came in and they quickly changed their tune. Any community that blindly accepts them being built so close to where children sleep and play is criminally irresponsible.
John, I'd bet the farm you have some financial interest in this. Why don't you go back to raping the countryside for a few bucks. I'm sure your grandparents are very proud of you.
John
Your fridge doesn't output infrasonic low frequency sound and run as long a time that the wind blowing will churn these huge turbines.
It's very easy to put this in scientific perspective
This project is an unnatural manmade environmental auditory invasion.
We are now seeing/feeling the effects of some of our other money making environmental invasions.
It is being created as an green powered excuse to light up the party and supported by people too pig-headed(numbskulled?) to turn it down and reduce their consumption.
This blog is constantly riding the fine line of being libelous. I think you should all be very careful from here on out of any postings which would be considered libelous on the part of those not opposing the wind farm. The same applies for the opposers who have been threatened on this blog. Either way all of this is taking away from the credibility of this movement. Even though you probably enjoy stirring up trouble you are instead making people laugh at some of the comments that are posted here.
Here are some things to chew on though. In Europe there are millions of people living in close proximity to facilties, which are very similar to the one being proposed here and in more denser areas than in Pugwash. I have seen several of these facilties in England, Germany, Spain, and Denmark. I have also taken the time to talk with people in these areas and I think in all my travels I have only encountered one person that actually opposes these facilities. That is Dan d'Entremont. So while you keep seaching the internet for people complaining across the continent why don't you actually put on your tarvellers knapsack and actually travel around the world to other facilities.
I also want to address the comment relating to the fridge not producing infrasonic sound. How is it that on one hand you will say that the humm of a wind turbine will produce infrasonic sound but that the humm of a fridge will not. The humms in both of these machines are motors in one and a generator in another, which are one in the same it is just a matter of which way the current is flowing. The same applies to computers, light ballasts, TV's etc. etc. Also I agree with you on the point of conservation, but lets be honest we are not going back to pre Edison days with no electricy unless we are struck by some god awful calamity. The point is that we will from here on out as a "civilized" society need some form of power generation that will exceed several millions of mega watt hours every year. Conservation will help, but we cannot go back to nothing at this point! Wind, In-Stream Tidal, Biomass burning facilities, solar PV, solar heat, geo thermal, gastrifrication, hydro, biofuel etc... are all things that can be thrown in the mix to reduce our dependancy on fossil fuels. That is the point here folks and yes the only people that are going to build these facilities are businesses that can get access to huge amounts of capital. Even Anne Murray doesn't have a 100 million bucks under her bed to pay for this stuff, so who will? Entrepreneurs not money grubbing resource barons. Stop being such BANANAS and get with the program here.
The last commentator got it right. Your house is full of infrasound from the electrical systems and appliances. When an anti wind power activist on PEI complained the power lines from the wind farm were causing hum in his house the CBC checked it out. A faculy member from UPEI measured the levels. The hum,infrasound, stray, induction etc. was higher inside that house than it was outside. We all live with this infrasound in our houses. Because we can't feel it we are unaware. It is obviously having no effect on householders.
50 years ago, the "Bristol Hum " alarmed Britons. People were advised to wear tinfoil liners in their hats to counter the harmful rays. Tinfoil hats have entered popular culture as a euphonism.
Infrasound is easy to use when opposing wind turbines because it can't be detected by humans without esoteric testing equipment. Because it is unnoticed terrible things can be attributed to infrasound and can't be disproved. You can't disprove a negative.
Some more terribly heart damaging noise levels:rain 50db, watch ticking 20 db, clock 30 db, general household 50 db, conversation 60 db, inside a car 70 db, wind turbine at 300 meters 45 db.
You also have to recognise the sound reduction characterists of houses. With windows outside sound levels are reduced 15 db, 25 with windows closed.
John McManus
Infrasound is classified as very low frequency sound.Your fridge motor does not output very low frequency sound-nor does it run continuously when the wind blows.If it did society would have long ago located their fridges away from their living quarters.(It does however create a vibrating low frequency magnetic and electrical fields because it is driven by AC at 60 cycles per second.)It takes a great amount of power to create low frequencies sound-go to any rock concert and check out the power amps and speakers used!and These don't continuously pump out constant low frequency tones.
The slowly rotating large dimension blades of a turbine do this in a cyclical manner creating a vibrating "tone(s)"
This repeating tone can set objects/fluids/etc. into a sympathetic vibration or resonance depending on the demensions and materials. It can cause the air space between the studs in a wall to make the drywall/plywood skin to act as a form of drum which can amplify the original vibration or thump as you can often feel when someone opens a car door outside your house or someone with a boom box stereo playing loud rap music parks or drives by.The same can happen with the air in a room/attic/crawl space/etc.This effect is often used to amplify the bottom end on stereo speakers(tuned resonance.)This is why big boxes sound more bassier than little boxes.
John's rather unusual comments suggest he has been hired by the wind industry to deceptively downplay these common facts.
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