When you woke up this morning, you wouldn’t have considered noise an important part of daily life, but the sound that makes up our daily noise climate is tailored by the goings on around each person, busy road traffic noise, trains passing, aircraft overhead and even general chit chat around us.
Therefore, here are some reasons why acoustics is important to each and every one of us.
#1 IT AFFECTS YOUR HEALTH AND WELLBEING
The distant ‘impact’ noise from external noise sources like the road being repaired outside, car horns ‘honking’ and the people around us can have a real effect on health and wellbeing. A clear strategy can be put in place to tackle these challenges head-on for commercial noise sources such as air handling units or kitchen extract systems for commercial use.
Noise has been proven to have a direct impact on health. There are four effects:
- Sleep ?
- Productivity ?
- Social Behaviour ?
- Interference with Communication ?
We often don’t consider noise to be an issue until it affects us directly; a common problem is called room acoustics. Consider when you go out for dinner at a restaurant and find the noise from the room is so loud, you need to raise your voice to be heard.
#2 THE NOISE CLIMATE AFFECTS EVERYONE
Environmental noise is the second most significant environmental risk in Western Europe according to a report published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), 2011. Environmental noise disturbance to residents has various health and hearing effects, including:
- Hearing loss
- Tinnitus, also referred to as ringing in the ears
- Sleep disturbances
- Cardiovascular problems
- Pain and fatigue
- Shoddy work and poor school performance
- Speech problems
- Hormonal responses (stress hormones) and their consequences on human metabolism and immune system function.
According to a survey, road traffic was the number one most disturbing noise source and noisy neighbours have been rated the second most disturbing noise source, this is according to a survey of 1.6 million people conducted on residents in Curitiba, Brazil.
#3 IT HAS AN ECONOMIC IMPACT
There is a £10 billion estimated annual social cost of urban road noise in England, which is a far greater cost than the impact of climate change (£4 billion). The Government Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs has classified the economic cost/ impact of noise into four groups:
- Productivity – through distraction, fatigue and interrupting communication, noise can have a negative impact on productivity.
- Environmental – sound has a notable effect on the natural environment, from altering bird breeding patterns to disturbing wildlife and damaging sensitive ecosystems.
- Amenity – at present, two amenity impacts can be quantified, sleep disturbance and annoyance.
- Health – noise has a range of effects on health, three of which include heart attacks, strokes and dementia.
To improve acoustic conditions, Climate Acoustics is committed to making noise more tolerable for everyone. Call Climate Acoustics today on 01245 800105 or email; info@climateacoustics.com. We’ll be happy to assist you in solving your noise problem.