Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today has written a book that's very near and dear to my heart. It is a screed against noise. Chris Berdik is a reporter and a writer who has a new book out, it's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. Chris, welcome to the program and thank you very much for writing this book.
Chris Berdik: Well, thank you. Grant, thanks for having me on.
GR: We really appreciate it. So I have to say right off the bat, in recent weeks, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm looking for it, paying more attention, but I've heard or I've read a few stories about the problems with noise. So I was wondering, is the concern about this a new emerging issue? Is it something that the media and the public is now looking at more, or am I just looking at it more, you know, looking for it?
CB: Yeah. I mean, some of it may be that you're keeping your eye out for it now. You know, noise has been around us, you know, for as long as we've been around. And it's been a thing that we complain about for nearly that long. You know, but the thing that's been happening and why I feel like, you know, I felt like this was a book to write now is, you know, we are in a growing planet with more and more people producing more and more noise, living closer together, more roads, cutting through our rural areas. And while there is more planes overhead, there's just a math equation going on here. And then the other part is that, you know, as we've been doing this, we've been sort of sonically shortsighted about how we plan our cities, how we build our buildings and create our spaces. We haven't thought about the sonic implications of all of this. So, you know, it's not a new problem. I do think it's a growing problem.
GR: Sonically short sighted, I love that phrase, I'm going to remember that. Thinking back, was there a historical turning point or inflection point in the problem with noise, you know, where you can go back and say, okay, now it starts to become a problem?
CB: Yeah, I would say that's a complicated question, actually, because, you know, we don't have a global decibel meter or anything like that to sort of say, okay, this is when, you know, we went up ten decibels worldwide. You know, there are plenty of places that are probably quieter now than they were a hundred years ago. You know, I'm from Pittsburgh, and we used to have steel mills up and down the rivers there, and they've all disappeared, you know, but what we e do have, you know, like I said, we have a diminishment of quiet areas, a diminishment of places where we are not set upon by noise. And we also have, I think, now some sort of digital noise to go with our audible noise. I think this is something that is important to keep in mind that this is not just a metaphor when we talk about, you know, the online cacophony that we're dealing with now. Our brains have to sort through all of that, all of those signals and it is an exhausting thing. I think they kind of accumulate.
GR: Yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't really thought about that aspect of it. I mean, I have sometimes kind of feel like I have many traumatic reactions when my cell phone goes off because it just kind of just startle(s) me. Well, let's, you know, let's get into some of the problems that that you deeply dive into in your book. First of all, what are the problems with noisy environments for people? You know, what does it do to us?
CB: Yeah. You know, there are a few things that it does to us. And I'll sort of start as I do, you know, with the inner ear. And this is where decibels, which is how we commonly understand noise which I think is kind of overly narrow, but this is where decibels really matter a whole lot. At this point, noise is just brute force acoustic intensity that can damage your inner ears, whether you like the sound or don't like the sound. If there are enough decibels, what starts to happen is that the connections, the nerve endings between your inner ear anatomy and your brain, they basically explode. They're filled with too much glutamate, which is kind of the signal, the neurotransmitter that is, you know, taking what is a vibration coming through the air and turning it into a signal to your brain. It's too much of that, those nerve endings can't handle it. And then what do you start to do is you lose the fine grained pieces of being able to hear, to be able to distinguish your friend's voice from another voice, to be able to hear a noise. You know, when people say that they can hear you but they can't understand you, this is what starts to happen. And then after that, you start to really lose your hearing and you start to need hearing assistance. So the World Health Organization estimates that about 2.5 billion people on the planet will have hearing loss through noise and aging by 2050. So that's the hearing part. But then at a lower decibel level, you start to have disturbances of sleep and chronic stress building up from noise exposure. You don't even need to wake up for your hearing to pay attention to noise in your sleeping environment, because hearing is a defensive mechanism, a defensive sensory system, your eyes are closed, but you're hearing is still awake. And you know, at around 45 decibels worth of say, transportation noise, you start to lose the restorative piece of sleep so when you're sleeping your heart rate goes down, your blood pressure drops. But those perk up again when noise comes into play and over time in a chronic way, that builds up has impacts on increasing cardiovascular disease risk, increasing hypertension, a range of issues that go well beyond hearing.
GR: It's interesting now that you say that, and I'm thinking back again on my own experiences, but there was a time when I was working temporarily but regularly in a city environment which was different for me in my life. And I would always be about two weeks in, you know, it would just sort of hit me like a wall of stress. And I think it might have been having to do with the noise. It's very, very interesting to think about that. So there's levels of problem here for humans. It's psychological, it's the health that comes from some of those things. And then it's actually your ear and your hearing itself. So it gets you on all these different dimensions.
CB: Yeah. It really infiltrates, you know, it starts in your ear, then starts to, you know, cause a whole lot of distraction issues, which we haven't really discussed, but that's a big one. Distraction and being cut off from people create stress. And then, of course, the sleep deprivations that contribute to a number of health problems.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the reporter and writer Chris Berdik and we're discussing his new book, it's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. So in your research on this, did you find that some kinds of noises are worse than other kinds of noises? I mean, I understand what you're saying about decibel level and the destructive effects it has, but I guess I'm thinking more psychological, you know, any kind of any kind of patterns there?
CB: There are a couple of patterns. You know, I would dig into these noises, as some people have, talking about their acoustic properties like, are they tonal noises? Now, what tonal noises means is that there's a single frequency band that has the most energy to it. So if you think about a high frequency whine or buzz or a low frequency rumble, research has shown that those types of noises, you know, are very disturbing to most people, that they, you know, can't ignore them, that, you know, especially the low frequency tonal sounds can penetrate walls and travel far distances and you feel them in your chest, you know, that kind of a thing. And, you know, that is a big piece of it. You know, the, how long do these sounds go on for and what is the timing of them if they are at night versus during the day? You know, context is a huge deal. We love to listen to bird songs when we're walking in the woods and it's all part of the experience there with the leaves under your feet and the greenery that you can see and the smell of the fresh air. But some people that have tried to use biosphere like nature inspired sounds in indoor spaces like workspaces have found that birdsong, people can't stand it. They get distracted by it. You know, they don't want to have to hear birds chirping when they're facing a deadline and they're sweating an important project so, you know, it's not just the sound, it's the sound in a particular context that matters a lot.
GR: Yeah, that's interesting. And I don't want to turn this into a half hour of a therapy session for me about noise with you. But, this feeds directly into this as I'm thinking about it, one of my pet peeves in life is noises that I can't control, which kind of relates to your birdsong in the workplace kind of thing. I mean, if it were up to me, I'm speaking, you know, tongue in cheek here, but I'd make wind chimes, I think, a felony. And playing music at a beach or a campground or while you're hiking along a trail, I think I might make that a capital offense. But I'm thinking about this, there's an aspect to this I want to ask you about. I'm fortunate to live where it's pretty quiet, relatively speaking, except in some of my neighbors, you know, break out their power tools for working on the yard. And then I also spend a lot of time in another place that's super quiet, but that's a luxury that a lot of people don't have. Is there a social justice element to this problem with noise do you think?
CB: There is. You know, the research is new on this. They have looked at it in the aggregate, which is looked at census track data, you know, demographics, and compare that to noise exposure based on transportation noise. There's been a big national study of transportation noise exposure. A lot of it is model based on, you know, how many airplanes are going over what the flight routes are, where the highways are, etc. And the research on that level shows that when you are in a wealthier and whiter census tract, you have less exposure to that noise. On a more kind of granular level at the city scale, people have done a lot of research into communities that were previously redlined, which was the practice in the 30’s and 40’s to assign risk for investment into certain areas. And it was, you know, often based basically on, you know, the ethnicity and the racial background of the people living there. And those studies, city after city, have found that in formerly redlined communities, they have more noise pollution in addition to other pollution.
GR: Yeah, I would think it might even extend to how the buildings are built. You know, someone has the money to live in a much more expensive apartment complex. I'm guessing the walls are thicker, the soundproofing is better.
CB: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the other part of it. You know, there's an issue of exposure and then there's this vulnerability side. So, you know, if you are in a more affluent neighborhood or just have the means, you will have better windows and walls and soundproofing, you'll have more green space around you to block the sound and also to give you a kind of an acoustic respite.
GR: Yeah, yeah. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Chris Berdik. He's a reporter and writer and the author of, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back” and we've been discussing the book and the issues that it raises. So before the break, we were talking about humans, the impact on humans, but there's also a lot of impact on animals that are important. And tell us a little bit about some of the ways that noise has a negative effect on animals.
CB: Sure. So there is some research into how very loud sound can cause a certain amount of hearing damage to animals, but that is somewhat limited. The sort of larger issue is how noise that humans bring into the environment, in particular, say, shipping noise in the oceans, that sort of constant noise shrinks their sensory worlds. That is something that, you know, we don't think about because we're not under the water very long, typically, as long as our breath lasts, I guess. But down there, especially when you're in the depths where the light doesn't penetrate the sounds of those places are very important to aquatic species that need to hear one another to communicate, to find their way when they're navigating, migrating, I should say, to find food, to avoid predators. Animals have to listen. We up here, if we're bothered by noise, we put on our noise canceling headphones where we get in the car and drive somewhere quieter, but animals don't have that luxury. And so the big problem a lot of people, the conservationists have talked about is, they term it sensory smog. So this is both from our noise and our artificial light, just making the world that these animals navigate smaller. And that's a big problem.
GR: Yeah, sensory smog, okay, I'm going to add that to sonically short sighted, this is great. I had read somewhere too that that kind of background noise like you were talking about with shipping in the ocean, but also above ground, really interferes with animals’ abilities to mate because they use sound, and the one thing I think I remember reading about this was frogs, you know, that they use sound in order to mate, the calls that they put out. But for animals, that are living close to traffic, you know, they just can't find each other anymore.
CB: Yeah. I mean, they will, the research has shown that the birds near roads will try to sing louder and similar with the whales, when the shipping goes by, they'll try to call out louder and stay above the background din. But there's a limit. The whales can only shout so much, the birds, likewise. And some species, will just go quiet because they're waiting it out. Like, you know, we might when an airplane flies over too close when we’re in the middle of our conversation, we just stop.
GR: And what about plant life and the planet more generally? Because you've got this argument that it's, you know, it's affecting everything. I mean, I don't want to be again too cheeky, but in the 70’s and the 80’s there was this big concern about you have to talk to your plants, you know, but don't yell at your plants, you talk to your plants. So tell us what you found in that realm.
CB: Sure. I know that there is research directly into how sound directly impacts plants. My research really looked at how sound it affects plants in an ecosystem sort of way in as much as, you know, nothing changes in isolation when we're in nature. There was a study in New Mexico at these natural gas wells where some of them had noisy air compressors to kind of keep the pressure in the gas lines, and some of them didn’t. And the researchers had noticed that at the noisy wells, these two birds, there was a jay bird and another bird, I can't remember the species of it, but these two birds were steering clear of these particular noisy wells. And then they thought, well, these two birds are really important for spreading the seeds of the plants in this area, these trees. So then they put out about a hundred or so plots they demarcated around the noisy wells and the quieter wells and they watched them for 12 years. And over those 12 years, they found that at the noisy wells, you know, there was something like 80% or 90% fewer tree seedlings because the birds had stayed away, they hadn’t spread the seeds. So these things ripple out in ecosystems.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Chris Berdik, and we've been talking about his new book. It's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. So we can't turn back the clock on everything, we kind of have the world we have now. We can't shut all of these things down, we can't shut shipping down. So I guess I wanted to ask you to talk a bit in the last part of our conversation here about what we can do to manage it and to make it better. How can we be more, you know, to go back to, sonically sophisticated? And let's take this at the individual level first, and then we'll take it out to, you know, in terms of planning and building and the social level. But first of all, how as we as individuals can do a better job of not making ourselves crazy?
CB: Yeah, well, I always say that the first thing we could do, and this is very easy, is to take better care of our ears. Before I started researching this book, I didn't protect my ears whatsoever, using power tools, going out to loud concerts and things like that. Now, I am much more careful following the advice of all the audiologists I’ve been talking to, all the hearing researchers. You know, you start with the little foamy ear protection you can buy them by the bag at CVS. But there's also even a little bit of a step up there. Musicians earplugs, these cost about $30 a pair, but what they do is they block about ten decibels worth of sound at every frequency level so you can hear the music, let's say you're going to show, just as clearly as you would without them, but just a little they take the edge off of it. So I use those a lot and I think you know, the research shows that outside of work environments where hearing protection is sort of required in the loudest environments, Americans use hearing protection about 8% of the time when going out to do loud things. This is a study I think a 2018, a nationwide survey. And so, you know, there's a lot of room for improvement there. And I think we're seeing some of it with a lot of the new devices that are focused on hearing, you know, like the AirPods, Apple AirPods Pro 2. These things kind of have some hearing protection built into them. But yes, we could do a lot better job there. That's the first part.
GR: What about just, I just think also making it important to be in quiet spaces. I mean, is that, is just something like an awareness of that important here too?
CB: Yeah, I think so. I think taking the time to be in those quiet spaces. And, you know, I had to chuckle when you were talking about the folks who now are hiking with the Bluetooth speakers. Because it seems to me to be sort of beside the point where when you're out there, you should take the time to enjoy that quiet. Have a moment to give your ears and your brain that peace of restoration.
GR: So let's bring it out. What can we do more societal and more in terms of how we construct our world to make this better?
CB: We can do a lot more to be sound aware when we are designing our products and our spaces. One great example is with restaurants. These became much noisier in the last 20 years or so because restauranteurs decided they wanted to prioritize kind of a modern industrial look. They took away all of the upholstery and drapes and they put the kitchens in the middle of the dining areas and jacked up the music. And you know, the result was that, you know, people can't talk to one another when they're having a meal. And this has been noticed more and more in reviews and people have elevated it in the Zagat surveys, you know, noise is the number one complaint, it's not bad food or high prices. So what can we do about it? Well, you know, there are now tools that allow people to simulate these spaces before they're built, before they're all put together and dealing with the noise is a bigger problem. To actually, you know, put in the parameters. You have certain materials, a certain number of people and you're going to have your music at this level. What's that going to sound like? And you simulate it and if it's a problem, if people can't have a conversation then you can add sound absorption bit by bit. So you still have the buzz of a kind of a nice, lively atmosphere but it's not the kind of thing that's going to, you know, make you have to sit there in silence while you eat. And so these kinds of tools can be used for restaurants for office spaces, you know, all these places where noise is a problem. It's just part of thinking proactively is kind of how I put it.
GR: Yeah. That's fascinating about the restaurants and the construction of them, the interior, because I have noticed in my life and I thought maybe I was, you know, losing my hearing, but I don't think I am yet, I'm sure it's not what it was when I was young but it's become impossible in many restaurants if there's a table of ten to have a conversation with someone who's not directly in front of you, you just give up. You pretend you hear them when they're talking and you just, you know, go ahead with what you're doing. Well, let me ask you this, are there any countries that are kind of ahead of the curve on this and are doing more than other countries or maybe thinking about the United States? Are there any states that are doing innovative things or is this just something that's in its infancy, this kind of sound awareness?
CB: Well, it is in its infancy. And I would say that in Europe, they have started to focus a lot more, they've already been focused on noise, you know, in a comprehensive way that, you know, they are, they require cities of a certain size throughout the European Union to create these five year noise reports that kind of track where the noise hotspots are in their cities, typically based on transportation noise sources. And they also, if they're a big enough city, ask these places to designate quiet areas, places that have, you know, much lower decibels and to protect those places from noise encroachment. So that is, you know, been a great source of awareness. The question is, what do these cities actually do beyond putting these noise maps together on paper? You know, and when it comes to quiet areas, what is the purpose of a quiet area if all you have is a handful of them in the sort of deepest parts of the largest park on the outskirts of your city? Maybe there's more that you could find that, you know, places that are not just based on decibels but are based on, you know, the greenery of the place there or that people have reported that they find it relaxing in different ways. And there's been some effort to kind of make them more accessible. So there's you know, some places have started to recognize that soundscapes are important and not just decibel levels. The question is, what are the tools that can be used to improve and assess these soundscapes? Those are all very much in their infancy. Those things, you know, the decibel is easy, it's just one number. A soundscape is much more complicated.
GR: Yeah, well, it is complicated. And it is something that I think we're going to need to keep thinking about. That was Chris Berdik and again, his new book is titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”, very important book on a very important topic. Chris, thanks again for making the time to talk with me, I learned a lot and again, thank you for writing a book like this.
CB: Grant, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
