September 6, 2025 • 52 mins
If you’ve ever found your blood pressure rising because some guy down the street doesn’t know how to keep the trigger on a leaf blower pulled all the way, then you’ve experienced noise pollution. Not only is it annoying, it turns out it’s deadly too! Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, friends, It's Josh. For this week's Select I've chosen
our October twenty twenty one episode a noise pollution, which
is actually an overlooked hazard to our health and it's
even been shown to cause death in some cases. Plus
it guest stars the worst thing in the world, the
gas powered leaf blower, and we get to the bottom
(00:21):
of why they're so terrible. Plus there's plenty more amazing,
action packed stuff, So kick back and enjoy this episode
on noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The Can I tell people what just happened?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
After going on fourteen.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Years coming up? Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In April Jerry hit record and you went, Hey, everybody, Wait,
I've been having a.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Lot of trouble with my brain lately. I think I'm
just Hey, I think you're doing great. I don't know
if I told you. Thank you. I think you're doing
great too. I don't know if I told you, But
I had trouble remembering how to what six plus seven
added together to? Did I tell you that the other day?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That sounds familiar?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That really bothered me. Man, Yeah, and that's like my
favorite number, and it's like I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I was putting my daughter to bed the other night
and as she was going to sleep, literally falling asleep, daddy,
what's four plus four?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Eight?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
What's six plus two? It's also eight?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
She's learning math, and you know that first stuff you
learn is literally just that simple addition. Yeah, and it's
just funny to think about, like, wow, that's what's on
her mind right now.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah. But also she's learning acceptance too. It's unquestioning.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Can I tell people how you spelled this document that
you sent my way for this noise pollution episode?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Sure? Boy, you're just laying it all out there, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
It was fun because it looked like a heavy metal band.
It was n O I ze p O I think
it was p O l l U s h U
N Yeah, And looking at it on paper was like, oh, man,
that's that's a good bad band.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah name it is like that's a that's a good
name for a made up band in a movie.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Like Wild stallions, Yes, Bill and Ted.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, although that's tough to compete with, you know it is.
I also think we should, uh, we should give a
little CoA here. I think it's one impossible for you
and I not to turn into old men complaining about
like loud music and loud mufflers and stuff in this episode.
So it's gonna happen. I think everybody who knows us
(03:06):
and saw the title this one knew it was gonna happen.
But let's just put it on the table now.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, and it's also funny you mentioned this because I
did mention noise pollution. I introduced that concept to my
daughter the other day and said, you know. She was like, well,
what's that And I said, well, it's as bad as
trash on the road, but it's noise that's doing it
and you should be aware of it. And she was like,
oh okay. And I guess it never occurred to me
(03:32):
that like loud noises for kids, unless it's something that
really bothers them, is just part of life.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Sure, it definitely seems to become more bothersome the older
you get.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I think I don't know why, but I'm going to
hypothesize that it's because you grow to learn that it
doesn't have to be that way, and you come to
really resent the things and the people who are making
it so.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, and I think that's why people One reason people
retire to the country or something like that, if they've
lived in the city their whole life. M h. Just
a little more tranquil, perhaps even bucolic lifestyle. Yeah, quieter,
and there's a lot of science behind it. It's not
just like, oh, I don't want to hear those noises,
(04:19):
as you will see throughout this episode, it is it's bad.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
For your health. Hey, speaking of retirement, have you seen
that documentary on the villages I have? It is bonkers?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, I saw it actually when I had COVID, I
went on a documentary binge and that was one of them.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Man, it was like one of the most disturbing documentaries
I've ever seen, and I've seen like Dear Zachary, and
somehow it was like up there with it.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
It was good man that I mean, I don't want
to give anything, but the one guy that was you know,
the sort of discos too. Sure, Yeah, that was It's
kind of funny at first, but then that got really sad. Too, Yes,
a lot of layers.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And all of it was incredibly sad.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I was highly recommended.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, just bizarre man. And then I was watching the
credits and I saw Darren Aronofsky was an executive producer.
I'm like, okay, nothing suddenly clicked a little more.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I thought a great idea for a movie would be
a setting like that. You couldn't call it that because
it's sure proprietary, but the town set it. Yeah, a
setting just like that where they wake up one day
and there's been a murder and then, like you know,
Kyle McLaughlin, it's kind of a twin peaksy thing, you know,
the stranger from a strange land comes in to investigate
a murder in a very unlikely place and all the
(05:33):
sort of weirdos there. I think that would be a
cool movie, yeah, or TV show.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Sure, well, I mean that is twin Peaks basically, right.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
But you could if you said it in a retirement
community in Florida, people wouldn't recognize.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
You could just walk away, dust in your hands off,
like job well done.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
There's plenty of things that have done that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
It's not just twin Peaks, sure, I know, just nobody
did it better than twin peaks, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Agreed, all right, So noise pollution. I think the fact
of the podcast to me came right up front in
that I never thought of the fact that a decibel
was a tenth of a bull or a bell.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Which his name is DESI right there. Yeah, I know,
I never thought of it either, because you never hear
of any other variation, and it's like one decibel, ten decibels,
one hundred decibels, you know, and apparently a bowl or
a bell b e l is named after Alexander Graham
Bell too.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Didn't know that either.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And the reason why we why a decibel is used,
which is one tenth of a bell, is because a decibel,
a one tenth of a bell difference in sound is
the lowest, the smallest difference that humans can detect, right,
So we trade in decibels here on the level.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And we trade in an algorithm when we talk decibels,
because it's one of those weird things where it's not
like one hundred decibels, is it twice as loud as
fifty decibels, it's spit into an equation that's actually one
hundred thousand times as loud.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, So like ten decibels. The difference between ten decibels
and twenty decibels is twenty decibels is ten times louder.
The difference between ten decibels and thirty decibels thirty decibels
is one hundred times louder.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
It's long riz right, and zero dbs as we'll call them.
That is the threshold of human hearing period, and one
hundred and forty decibels is about where you can start
to experience literal physical pain from a sound.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, I saw between one hundred and twenty and one
hundred and forty.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, it ranges like I mean, I've been to some
loud concerts and small venues.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, Dinosaur Junior at Variety Theater was it for me.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I was just about to say, Dinosaur Junior. They're one
of the legendary loud bands.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
It was insane.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It is super loud. But it's not like I don't
remember feeling pain, but I do remember feeling discomforted. A
couple of these where I was like, jeezu, this is like,
I like my music loud, but this is a little.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Much, dude. Yeah, Like I don't wear earplugs. I wore
earplugs in that, and I was like, I'm saving myself
right now. It was so loud, and I meant to
say Variety Playhouse, not Variety Theater.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, because we played there before. We don't want to disrespect. No,
I know, you know they've but all of this to say,
God bless j Mascus.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, no, it's great, but it was really loud.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
What about this conversation that we're having. What is that?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, it depends a normal conversation something around sixty decibels.
And I saw that. That's people standing about a meter
apart speaking without raising their voices. That's sixty decibels right there.
For a reference.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
What about a car?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Cars are about ten times louder to ten hundred to
one thousand times louder than normal conversation, depending on the
car of the truck, between seventy and ninety decibels.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
What about an airplane or cat siren?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So you would think, okay, a normal conversation is sixty decibels,
an airplane being one hundred and twenty decibels is twice
as loud. No, my friend, it's one hundred thousand. It's
one hundred thousand times louder. An airplane is one hundred
thousand times louder than a normal conversation if it reaches
(09:15):
one hundred and twenty decibels.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
All right, if you've ever been on a tarmac, like
a live tarmac and herd a plane kind of landing
or taking off, you that's just some loud stuff. Yes,
And that's why they wear those cans on their ears.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, they and they definitely should because we're starting to
realize that there's all sorts of hearing loss besides the
traditional ones that you can pick up on a regular
hearing test. There's something called hidden hearing loss that we're
just starting to get our eyes or mind around where
the structure of your hearing apparatus in your ear, the
little cilia that's almost like a venus flytrap trigger hair,
(09:51):
but for sound instead, like those things can be intact,
but the neurons that form the chain between your ear
and your brain can be permanently damaged, so that the
sound that gets to your brain is garbled or are
partially missing. And that's a huge thing that can happen
at much lower intensity than we understood before. And speaking
(10:14):
of intensity, I think we should say real quick a
decibel to us humans we basically talk in decibels as
like a measure of volume, because that's what it appears
to like us, like an increase in decibels is an
increase in the volume of the sound. But really what
a decibel is measuring is the intensity of the disturbance
of an air of the air that something has made.
(10:37):
So if you're really close to that disturbance, it's going
to be a very intense exposure to your ear. If
you're further away, it's going to be a much less
intense intense exposure because it kind of dissipates over distances.
But to you, it's just registering is a difference in volume,
where really it's a difference in the intensity of the
wave that's being produced that's traveling through the air.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That's right, And uh, this is all sound, Yes, that's
not noise. Noise is different. Noise is what we're talking
about mainly, and noise is classified as unwanted sound and.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
That simple enough.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, that can vary depending on who you are. Obviously,
you know, the sound of your significant other's voice after
forty years may be noise to you asking for some tea.
The sound of a Harley Davidson motorcycle being rebbed up
in front of your house might be noise. Or those
(11:32):
those blowers that used to hate and how they give
you love and use.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I still don't love it, and I went battery powered,
but it's still even while I'm using, I'm like, I'm
a terrible person.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
But you get it done quickly, probably right, so quick.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So quick. I'm like mincing and prancing, just getting a ton.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And there's a lot of kinds of different noise sometimes,
Like let's say you work in a in a machine
shop or something and you use a machine, Like the
sound the machine makes is like it's not necessary, but
it's a byproduct. It's a result of the machine working correctly.
(12:11):
It's not like, well, let's just make this thing loud.
It's like, well, I'm sorry, a jackammer is going to
be loud because that's just the way it goes. You
can our jackammer episode is fantastic. So that sound isn't
necessarily noise, but the intensity and repetition of that sound
makes it becomes noise.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's an unwanted intensity, or it can just
the sound existing itself, like you're saying, like a leaf
blower just an unwanted existence of sound. So either way,
the operative thing is it's unwanted sound. That's the key, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
This is another cool fact of the episode, I think,
is that they think that as late as through the
nineteen forties and into nineteen fifty, natural sounds were still
the dominant sounds that you heard, and then things really changed.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, because there's a there's a big qualifier that a
lot of researchers make that and not everybody does, But
that noise is by definition human caused, right, like either
we're yelling or whatever, or one of the machines that
we've created is making noise. But that you wouldn't say,
like the sound of that waterfall is noise, Like we
(13:22):
don't think of like natural sounds typically as noise. It's
just sounds. And as we'll see, it's probably because we
have been living, like our species has been living around
those sounds and has definitively excluded them as threatening, so
that they're they don't they don't produce like an irritation
in us. They just are sound, almost regardless of how
(13:46):
intense they.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Are, right, And that and again that irritation is subjective
because that rock concert that I enjoy. Someone else might
call that noise that that Space Shuttle launch that is
super loudud might be noise to some people, but to others,
you know, it's the same sound, but they they don't
think of it as noise because they're excited and exhilarated
(14:10):
in the moment to see and hear that thing.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah. So, you know, the other night, the inspiration for
Crew came back on the Dragon capsule. Did you watch that?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
No? Did you see it live?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
We didn't see it because they splashed down in the Atlantic,
but we heard the sonic boom it made when it
came back into the atmosphere over Florida. It was a
stounding that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Did you see that doasonic boom? No? I didn't.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Oh, it's really good. It starts off like, oh god,
this is not good. This is like a terrible corporate ad,
and then it really starts to find its feet. It's
crazy how it evolves over like just the first couple episodes.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I gotta see it.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
It's good. It's definitely worth seeing.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
What other kinds of noise you got? Industrial noise, which
that's classified as kind of from the beginning of the
p process all the way to the end of any
kind of industrial process, and that's basically called continuous noise
from you know, raw materials all the way to the
to the end disposal of whatever byproducts can usually cause
a lot of racket.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah. So like you know, like like a generator humming
or something like that, there's not a lot of variation
and intensity. It's basically this hum or steam being released,
or even like a rhythmic like a like something being
like hammered, No, not hammered. That's a different that's called
(15:35):
the impulsive noise, but just something that doesn't really vary.
It's just kind of a monotonous sound. That's that's this
kind of a subcategory called continuous sound. And it just
so happens that most industrial processes are continuous in nature.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right, whereas a train going by your house, or a
plane flying or a car going by or a siren
is intermittent.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah. And then also you could probably say, like if
you held the trigger down on a backpack leaf blower,
which again is the worst thing that anyone's ever invented,
but if you held it down, that would be a
continuous sound for the whole time it was going. But
no one does that ever, they just rev in this
arrhythmic pattern that your brain is just giving its all
(16:22):
to try to try to find a pattern in. And
so you get worn out and irritated so quickly because
of those things, because they don't follow rhyme a reason.
And in conjunction with that, it's an intermittent sound, which is,
from what I can tell, one of the worst sounds
for us.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Right. And then you've also got community noise, which is
just people noise. I think the leaf blowers are thrown
into that lawnmowers, you know, if you got a festival
in your neighborhood, or fireworks on the Fourth of July,
or people playing their music in their cards or their houses.
This is all just sort of people generated community sound.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeap. So those are basically the three categories that I saw.
Industrial trafficking, community.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I think we should.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
All right, We'll be right back. I gotta go quiet
down that racket outside. I'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Okay, Do you finished shaking your fist at those teenagers
on your lawn.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I'm lucky because we don't have loud. We don't have
one neighbor on one side, and our neighbor beside us
is pretty quiet, but I do live near and I've
talked about it before, a pretty main road and you
kind of get used to it. But I also yearn
you know, to be a few blocks in. But you know,
you can't pick up your house and move it. So
what are you gonna do? You get used to it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
You can, but it's really expensive.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Well, no, that is true. You can move a house sometimes.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Didn't we do an episode on that once?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
How to Move a House?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I think I don't know if we did one just
on that. It may have been like historic districts or something.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And by the way, that episode we couldn't think of
the other day was crumple Zones.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Oh boy, so we did do a whole episode on
crumple zones.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
We did.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Boy, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel there.
But I remember that being an interesting episode though.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
It was totally interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, Well that's the stuff you should know, way, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Chunk it is? Indeed, should we talk about hearing damage?
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, So, like I was saying, there's that kind of
new type of hearing damage that we're wrapping our minds
around that is like the death of the neurons that
are supposed to transmit the electrical impulse to the brain,
And so we don't hear very well. Our communication is garbled.
And yet you can pass a traditional hearing test no problem.
(18:59):
But other research is really starting to unfold like less
predictable ways that noise and noise pollution actually affects our health.
And it's like our entire system is negatively affected by
noise and noise exposure.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It is, and it basically at the beginning of the
whole process is triggering the same exact thing that triggers
your fight or flight response, Like you're gonna have the
same reaction to you know, if you hear a siren
go by, the same thing is happening in your as
far as your brain knows. Then what happens if like
(19:38):
a bear walks up to you and roars right?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, So, like our hearing is always on and it's
always on the lookout for a potential threat, And one
of the ways that a potential threat can give itself
away is by making a sound. Right. It was, like
I was saying earlier, like we've been around waterfalls and
the sound of waves in our evolutionary history for so
long that basically it seems like when you're born, you
(20:02):
come equipped with this. Don't worry about that sound. Actually
you can be soothed by it. It's not something that
should stimulate your fighter flight response. But we've lived around
industrial machinery and the sound of a text message or
a leaf blower, the stupid leaf blowers for such a
little amount of our evolutionary history that our minds are
(20:24):
not at all attuned to those things, or we haven't
kind of adopted this idea that a leaf blower is
non threatening and so it stimulates the fighter flight response
and is when we hear it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That's right. So you're going to hear that sound you're amigdalah,
which we've talked about plenty, contributes to emotional processing, is
going to send that same distress signal to the hypothalamus.
And again that gets if you are in a fight
or flight response, which is why you probably want to
run screaming if you hear too many sirens you're here
(20:57):
too many leaf blowers, sure, and then that's going to
signal your adrenal glands to get your adrenaline going. And
I believe cortisol gets going as well. Yes, it's like
literally mimicking fight or flight.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, And so they figured out that like people who
are continuously chronically exposed to sound, like say people who
live like really close to an airport, are really close
to the subway tracks, or people who work in a
really noisy factory, they have all sorts of crazy random
health problems, Like their kids sometimes have low birth weight. Obviously,
(21:33):
they can develop tonitis, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Their children
who are exposed to chronic noise can have cognitive impairments,
high blood pressure, like all sorts of crazy stuff. And
so you think, well, okay, that's like, that's terrible anybody
who has to live near noise or work near noise,
(21:54):
like we should do something about that. But it's even
worse than that, Like, noise pollution is even more in
citia than that because you don't have to be chronically
exposed to it. You don't have to live in a
place where you're like, this is an objectively noisy place
that I live or work in to still suffer from
the effects of noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, I mean it can affect you when you're sleep because,
like you said, your ears are always on. It's not
like you go to sleep and the ear say, well,
I'm going to take a nice break. That would be
a fantastic evolutionary adaptation. Actually, yeah, well actually it would
be terrible.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
It would these days. It wouldn't be days. It would
be great the Mountain, the Mountain, Lion Sabertooth Tiger days.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, it'd be nice if there was a switch and
you could kind of control that.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Oh, it'd be so nice. I think the switch is
the white noise wave machine. Is that switch?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, which I've gotten addicted to such that I have
to travel with them now.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, everywhere I go I've heard that. Yeah. Basically, once
you start, you can't go back.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, I like it, though, I do. Brown noise is
my drug of choice.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
It sounds so gross, though brown.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I make a brown noise every morning, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Wow, I was not expecting Dangerfield to make an appearance.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well that's what you meant, right, poop or no?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah? I mean I guess anytime I hear brown, I
think it's poop.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You know, you think of that or you think of
ween the band.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Did they have a brown song or album?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
They talk about the brown thing, the brown sound and
brown is just sort of their color and how they
used to talk about sound. And I've heard other groups
talk about brown sounds.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
So what does brown sound sound like?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, brown noise, you know if white noises, brown noises.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Okays middle.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, it's sort of a lower lower end. And if
you actually play it through a speaker, like if you
put it on your phone and play it through a
little bluetooth, you can get some good bass and it
just it really works wonders for me, I.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Should try brown noise or even white noise. I've been
using chrome noise where it's like and it's really not
helping me sleep at all. You like?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
You like I have the sound of an early Internet
connection being made of a constant. Did they ever name that?
They should have named that be great.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
To Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I just call it whatever it was.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
They called it the tickety wichet, right.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Interrupted sleep though, that's that's the big problem, or one
of the big problems, because your ears are always on.
If you have interrupted sleep or poor sleep overall, you're
gonna be tired. Obviously, your creativity, your memory can get impaired.
Your creativity is gonna be low. You're gonna have impaired judgment,
your psychomotor skills might be impacted. You might have more headaches.
(24:44):
They've done studies. If you live near airports and stuff
like that, or you know, next to like a rail yard,
you're gonna have more headaches, you might take more sleeping
pills as a result, you might be more prone to
minor accidents, and you are going to be more prone
to seek psychiatric treatment in your life. They like studies
have shown this.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, there's a study of people living near European airports.
They found a ten decibel increase in aircraft noise was
associated with a twenty eight percent increase in anxiety medication,
and that people were also likelier to have like twenty
five percent more likely to have symptoms of depression. So again,
(25:24):
all this is just from like having not good sleep,
which is bad enough, but apparently Chuck it even gets
worse because even if your sleep isn't disturbed where you're
waking up and not getting sleep because.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Of noise, right, like you get used to it sort of.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Uh huh, the noise is still affecting you while you're
sleeping because again, your ear never turns off. It's always
on the listen out for some sort of threat creeping
up on you. And so if you're exposed to noise
while you're sleeping, it still has that stress effect on you.
And what they've figured out is that one of the
problems of just being chronically stressed through something like noise
(26:02):
and I think stress in general, is that it affects
I think it's called the end of thelium, which is
the lining of your blood vessels, and they respond to
chemicals that tell them to constrict to relax, and they
get constricted when they get stressed, when they're exposed to stress,
like cortisol or something like that comes along and says constrict.
(26:25):
And when they do that, you get high blood pressure,
you can end up with heart disease, you can end
up suffering from heart attacks. And what's insane is they
figured out that after one night of being exposed while
you're sleeping to something like train sounds, your endothelium starts suffering,
(26:46):
like it doesn't function as well after just one night
of that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Right, Like, isn't the idea that you can have no
other sort of poor health markers and it can actually
be brought on because of this noise?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Right, Yes, while you're sleeping you're still getting sleep, but
it's still happening to you while you're sleeping. And not
only like high blood pressure or like a heart attack
or something like that coming down the road, but also
like diabetes, obesity. There's a lot of things that we're
figuring out are tied to the lining of the blood
vessels and whether they're healthy or not. It's a huge
(27:22):
predictor of a whole range of diseases. And when you
hear noise, that's your stressors trigger your endothelium to constrict,
and that is a really bad thing.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
It is here in the United States. We kind of
started studying the stuff in earnest in the seventies. That
was when pollution was a big deal just all around
in the United States, and we started to say things like, hey,
maybe you shouldn't just have a family picnic and then
just pick up your blanket and dump all the trash
(27:55):
on the ground like they did on that episode of
Mad Men.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And Anchor Man when they're all eating McDonald's and they
throw it on the ground.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
I saw a guy throw a fully like McDonald's thing
out the window the other day and smashed on the sidewalk.
Oh my god. And I was just like, who who
does that? Still?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, that's the problem is we're at a place in
our country's history where if you confront people like that,
there's a chance you're going to get shot for confronting
someone like that. But I don't confront But that's like,
that is the kind of behavior you should, under normal circumstances,
non shooting circumstances, feel perfectly fine confronting somebody about and
being like what is wrong with you? Like, we're so
(28:36):
far beyond that, Like everyone knows you shouldn't do that.
It's just, Oh, it drove me insane.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I got to a good fight with him in my brain.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yes, I know, Like what, Like, where's the solution, where's
the answer?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I don't know, man. I think the zen path is
you go pick up that McDonald's cup and throw it
away totally and and say a prayer for that person
good luck. So yeah, New York is where they started
studying this stuff in the seventies because it was kind
of wrapped up, like I said, folded into larger pollution studies.
They're like, well, we might as well talk about noise pollution.
(29:12):
New York is a place to do it, and they
did there were a couple of studies in the nineteen
seventies about subway noise that really sort of gave put
the whole thing on some terra firma as far as
the health effects and learning effects. In the case of
kids at PS ninety eight Manhattan, it was very close
to the train tracks there, the subway train tracks, like
(29:34):
real close, yeah, like two hundred and twenty feet away.
And they found and this is pretty startling, they found
that the kids that were closest to the train tracks
were eleven months behind their classmates that were on the
other side of the school.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, on like not in another school, just on the
other side of the school.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, almost a full well, I mean that is basically
a full school year, yeah, because you know, with summers
off and stuff, that's an academic year plus that they
were behind. And they installed acoustic tiles in the classroom
and some dampening devices, and they did a follow up
study and the gap had closed basically, So I mean
(30:16):
there's proof right there, like your kids are not learning
as well if they're near that subway noise.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
There's another kind of landmark study in the seventies in
New York that established the concept of noise pollution at
a place called the Bridges apartment high rise, or a
cluster of them in Manhattan that I believe ninety five
maybe drives under or really really close, and the traffic
(30:42):
noise is so bad that even as high up as
the eighth floor, the traffic sound is about the level
of a vacuum cleaner. And like just sitting in your apartment,
you have to raise your voice to be heard, which
I mean, just the stress of that I can't imagine.
Like that's an inhabitable, uninhabitable place. I believe people are
(31:04):
still living there as well. But this study found that
children living there were far behind at reading comprehension, at
listening comprehension, and just weren't learning as quickly as other
kids their age who did not live in the Bridges.
So those two studies together from New York kind of
(31:26):
established this idea like, Okay, there's a real problem with
noise pollution, and then it just went away for many,
many years until about twenty eleven when the who there
was a bunch of other studies a lot of the
other ones that we've referenced so far came out around
twenty ten twenty eleven twenty thirteen. I'm not sure what
exactly kicked it off, but there was a big spade
(31:47):
of them. But then the WHO released a really big report.
Not that Who, the band, the World Health Organization.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
They're another loud band actually, and.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, they felt terribly guilty about causing hearing loss in
their their fans, so they launched this study of basically
all of Western Europe. They looked at i think something
like five hundred different studies and did a meta analysis
of them to calculate what's called the disability adjusted life
(32:17):
years or dailies that were lost in Europe every year
to noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, And the idea of a daily is they basically say,
it's like the healthy years of your life that end
up being lost to this human made noise that you're
living with. Right, And it's kind of a sort of
an esoteric way to think about it, but once you
wrap your head around it, it makes a little bit more sense.
(32:45):
But they found that at least one million healthy years
of life are lost every single year only just in
Europe due to noise pollution. A million healthy years of
people's lives right annually.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, and that means because of all of the disease
burden that noise pollution produces in humans. That that's how
much of our healthy lifespan is shaved off every year collectively,
or how much Europe's is. And they did a follow
up study in twenty eighteen, Chuck, and found that actually, no,
we got it wrong. It's one point eight million dailies
(33:21):
are lost in Western Europe alone each year. So they
definitely established through these couple of who studies, like, noise
pollution is still a thing and we should probably do
something about it. And there was another study that was
released this past year that said, yes, dailies are significant,
but we may have found a link that shows that
(33:43):
noise pollution can actually straight up kill you under some
circumstances potentially.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, And this one was this is pretty startling because
they looked at heart well not necessarily a heart attack,
but nighttime deaths. No, I guess it was heart attack, yes,
but if you die overnight, die in your sleep quote
unquote from heart attacks and the link to commercial aircraft
flying over your house. And I guess they had a
(34:11):
way to sort of cancel out all the other factors.
And they got down to the nitty gritty that three
percent of all night time deaths from heart attacks can
be attributed to the sound of aircraft flying overhead while
you're sleeping.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yep, that's just like that was it. That was the
last stress response that your body could handle, and you
had a heart attack and died from that sound. They said, like, Okay,
we found a definite correlation, but if there is causation here,
then we can talk up about three percent of those.
That's astounding.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
It is astounding. We're going to take a break. That's
the human grossness, and we'll talk about the awful things
that we're doing to our animal friends and nature right
after this. All right, We talked about a lot of
(35:20):
studies that basically all added up to noise pollution very
bad for human beings, like literally bad for their health.
And I know we've talked about a few of these
before over the years, especially when it comes to whales,
but all manner of Mother nature are impacted by this noise.
(35:40):
They did a study in the early two thousands about
stress hormones.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
For what kind of whales were they right whales.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Right whales in the Bay of Fundy, And they saw,
and this is remarkable, they saw a really weird unexplained
declined in the stress hormone concentrations that went away and
then came back up again, and they eventually realized it
was a halt in the shipping in the bay after
nine to eleven happened.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah, because shipping is probably humans' noisiest marine endeavor that
we do all the time constantly. And the idea of
a break in that having being connected to a huge
decline in stress hormones in whale poop, that's significant. But
it was an accidental discovery, and I think it led
(36:28):
other people to start studying stuff like that, like the
effects of noise on wildlife. And there was this I
think you University of Idaho. I'm sorry if it's Idaho state,
please don't be mad. I think it's Idaho, okay, a
study from twenty twelve where researchers set up like what
they called a phantom road, which is basically they have
fixed a line of loudspeakers to some trees out in
(36:51):
the wilderness that stretched about a half a mile in length,
and they just played road and traffic noise out like
city stuff, just like the kind of stuff that possibly
a remote road through the wilderness would sound like. Because
They recorded it in Glacier National Park on a road there,
and just from that, just from like this rural Glacier
(37:14):
National Park road noise, something like more than a quarter
of all the birds in the area just left. They
were like, we're moving. Yeah, we're going to Canada. So'd
everybody in the United States.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah, you know, I think I definitely noticed, and I
heard other people talk about in like April of last
year when things really slowed down commuter and traffic wise
due to the pandemic. And I don't think it was
just our imaginations, but there were there was a lot
more bird activity going on, and I remember, I think
(37:50):
I remember us even talking about it, or maybe it
was just quieter for us, so we noticed the more
or maybe a combination of both, but there was a difference.
And when you know, when shipping stops after nine to
eleven or when traffic stops, nature says, oh, well the
human a holes are gone. Now we can start behaving
(38:13):
normally again.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, like things are back to normal. And that's I mean,
that's just on land. Also, they found that Idaho study
found that the birds that stuck around lost a bunch
of weight, which they would have needed to migrate, so
maybe they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. But
that was the land study. There's been other studies on land,
but it seems like the we're doing a lot of
(38:35):
damage to marine ecosystems as well, like probably even more
because sound waves travel in water a lot better than light,
which means that most of the animals that live in
the water have really sensitive hearing. That's what they've evolved
to use to communicate and listen out for, right, So
when we make noise, it's really problematic in marine ecosystems.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, and we make a lot of noise. I mean
that shipping activity we talked about is super disruptive to
anything underwater. When they search for mineral deposits on the
seafloor or under the sea floor, they use these seismic
air guns that are you can hear those things like
a fish can hear that a thousands of miles away.
(39:16):
Very disruptive. Sonar. I know we talked about sonar in
an episode years ago and how that affected marine life.
I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Did we do an entire episode on the time they
blew up the beach to whale? Like what to do
with the beach whale.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Maybe, but they basically kind of say now, like they
think the reasons whales beach themselves is because of these
noises and sonar is a big culprit.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Right, Like it just drives them out of the water,
which sounds bonkers. But if you ever think about how
humans sometimes jump from tall buildings rather than being burned
by the intensity of a fire, I think it's virtually
the same principle. Sure, so we are we have become
aware of just how much noise pollution affects not just us,
(40:03):
but the environment as well. Like it is a form
of pollution, and it seems like, you know, it started
to accumulate in the last few years, but really we've
known for a good fifty years that noise pollution is
really bad for everybody, and yet we've done almost nothing
about it. But we had the start, Chuck, We started
out like we were going to like almost immediately when
(40:26):
we realized how bad noise pollution was. In the seventies,
we started to do something about it, and the federal
government passed like three and actually I saw a fourth
one huge acts that had to do with basically controlling
noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, either controlling noise pollution for people in general, or
through OSHA, making sure people were working in safe conditions,
or at least had you know, the earcns and things
they needed to work safely. And it was, like you said,
it was headed in the right direction. We knew it
was bad, and we were trying to stop it. And
then the Reagan administration came along and said, nuts to that,
(41:02):
that's federal regulation. Let's just leave it to the states.
Because you ask any governor of any state and they'll
tell you their citizens know to do the right thing,
and they'll do that right thing. And so we'll just
leave it up to the states and let them they
volunteer to phase itself out. The Office of Noise and
Abatement Control on paper still exists, but Congress said, you know,
(41:24):
let's just not fund them anymore, and let's keep these
laws on the books, but really not worry about it
too much because the states will take care of it, right,
because states always do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, And the states, of course did absolutely nothing, and
it's partially because they can't do a lot about it.
A lot of noise is really best understood, studied, and
regulated by the federal government. Like what, like Georgia has
a bunch of money reserved to study the effects of
noise on humans. Like, no, that's totally a federal kind
(41:53):
of thing to do, you know, And that's what some
of those seventies acts set up, like that Office of
Noise Abatement and Control or Noise Controlling the Baby, Like
its purpose was to study that kind of stuff. That's
not what states do. So the states have, well not
the states, but usually more municipalities and counties have. They
have taken steps to kind of mitigate sound pollution, Like
(42:15):
there's your noise pollution. There's usually regulations on how early
or late a landscaping crew can work within the city limits,
or some of them say like you can't boom your
stereo or you're not allowed to have that broken glass
muffler on your Harley. Like there's some stuff like that.
But then like if you live kind of under a
(42:35):
flight path, if your town wanted to say, you know what,
you can't fly over our town and wake everybody up
between you know, twelve at night and seven in the morning,
you can't fly an airplane over it. The airplanes would
just be like like I didn't hear you, Sorry, I
was listening to the FEDS who say you can't make
laws like that.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yeah, and you know, I get the feeling with municipalities.
It is more like complaints from neighbors kind of noise
or the lawn cruise in construction like you were saying,
unless like stuff with big teeth recently. Weird reason I
won't get into, but I was looking up noise ordinances
and Athens, Georgia, and they're kind of funny when you
(43:16):
look at these noise ordinances. It's like it literally said,
like you know, walking down the sidewalk yelling at one another,
talking about basically drunk kids, you know, like the French
quarter kind of thing. It said, you know, this includes
hooting and hollering, and it was something about being able
to hear you from like three hundred feet away, but
(43:38):
or noise from your apartment. But it's you know, it's
like good luck with that. Like you can call the
cops on someone maybe, yeah, but there's no teeth or
or or what do you call it when you or
enforcement kind of with a lot of this stuff, aside
from singling out people when it happens in the moment
and you may get a cop come by and say,
turn it down.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
But even if if there's a will to do something,
it depends on if it's like rail traffic or air traffic.
Like the federal the federal government ties local towns and
counties hands like they can't do anything about it, and
there's as a result, there's a lot of noise pollution
that people can't do anything about. There's a there's a
town in Canada. I can't remember the name of it,
(44:21):
but it is. It's got rail like a rail system
that goes through it, and it doesn't have like alarms
or like the arms that come down. So trains have
to honk their horns at least three times as they
cross through this town. And there's a bunch of different crossings,
and they calculated that train horns blair twelve hundred times
(44:44):
a day in this little tiny town. And like obviously
everybody's going nuts, but they can't do anything about it
because the federal government of Canada is in charge of
regulating rail travel like every other developed or industrialized country.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yeah, and even if it's something like Osha and like
you work in a loud factory and they're trying to
regulate that, they say that a they don't cover all
industries they should cover, and when they do, it's very
inconsistently applied. And even when they do apply it inconsistently,
they say that these limits aren't even low enough to
(45:20):
protect all the workers anyway from hearing loss. It said,
OSHA regulations allow workers to be exposed to ninety five
decibels for four hours a day, five days a week
for your entire forty year career. And that's like, you're
going to suffer from hearing loss if that's the case.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah, that's like holding a leaf blower right next to
you for four hours a day, five days a week
for forty years. Like of course you're yeah to lose
your hearing. Like that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Well, and then factor in the other health effects that
no one ever talks about that we mentioned in the
whole first half of this thing, and you have an
unhealthy population if you're stuck in one of those places.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Yeah, so we can sit here and cavetch all day,
which we would love to do. But there are solutions
to this. But I want to point out one more time,
all these solutions are zero thanks to the Reagan administration. Instead,
there's some simple stuff you can do to help us humans,
Like you can change aircraft routes, you can build barriers
(46:18):
along roadways and railways. You can even green it up,
like they found that if you use shrubbery and trees
mixed together so that they basically produce a fence and
you plant them close to the road or close to
the railway rather than close to the place that you're
trying to protect, they do pretty good at reducing the
decibels of the sound the noise pollution coming from the traffic.
(46:42):
That's some easy stuff you can do. And then on
the user end, on the individual's end, there's all sorts
of like acoustic insulation and paneling you can add to
your house to make it a little more soundproof and quieter.
What about this mufflers.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Chuck car mufflers.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, so apparently the ones that make the sound or
not not they're not good.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I mean that they could, they could change that.
The EPA could get involved and say, you know what,
you can't have those kind of mufflers anymore.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Thank god if they did.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
As far as the shipping go, I know, it's always
like a Honda Civic or something that's like tricked out,
like it's some kind of race car as far as
the water goes in the shipping stuff like that. Those
big ships. They found that if they separate the ship's
engine from the hull, they are quieter, much quieter, And
they even found that there is I think there's a
(47:36):
seventy five percent reduction in acoustic energy six to eight decibels,
which is significant. And they also found that it is
less fuel efficient. And if they like retrofitted or kind
of changed the way they built these ships, I don't
know if you can. Well, I guess you can retrofit someone.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Well, yeah, the propellers are what's making them less fuel efficient,
so you can ease not easily, but you can take
off the old propellers and put on new ones.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Right, But it cast a lot of money up front,
like they will save in the long run. And I
think is it pronounced Maersk, the big shipping company. Yeah,
they spend one hundred million bucks to do just eleven
of its ships, So that gives you the idea of
how much it costs. There may be see some efficiencies
if they did more or something, but it's not cheap.
(48:20):
And they have seven hundred and forty ships. They've done eleven, so.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Well, I did see that is actually a very small
fraction of all of the ships involved in shipping that
are responsible for the vast majority of the noise. So
if you did just focus on the worst offenders, it
would have a significant impact.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
There's also a huge amount of noise, apparently underwater noise
that comes from offshore wind farms because of the pile
driver that is moved by up and down by the
blades to help produce the electricity to move the turbine.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And they found that if you just put a perforated
pipe around the pile driver, the pile driver's going to
produce bubbles and those bubbles will dissipate the noise. Almost
all the noise I think like ninety five percent of
the noise coming from those offshore wind farms. That's a
really simple, easy solution.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Just do it people.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, and there's one other thing that I hadn't thought about,
but I saw a couple places, and it really makes sense,
is that the noise pollution we're contributing to marine ecosystems
in particular is just such low hanging fruit that there's
no reason we shouldn't do this. There's some really easy
stuff we can do, Like even re routing shipping lanes
is one thing we can do, and that by doing
(49:33):
that it will actually stabilize marine ecosystems and marine life
so that it will buy us a little time while
we're figuring out much trickier stuff like ocean acidification and
things that are also threats to it. So it's like,
just removing noise pollution would really go a long way
toward extending the I guess the health and vitality of
(49:55):
the oceans while they're you know, while we're combating climate change.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
I love it. Let's get all these things going. Our
health is suffering.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Let's start with the mufflers.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Yeah, that's just annoyance and health.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah. Well, since Chuck said that's just annoyance, of course, everybody,
that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
This one's pretty short and sweet. I just love it
when we get an answer about something. I think I
might have known this at some point, but we talked
about shrinking as humans. And this is from Steve in Roscoe, Illinois.
He says, I've been a longtime listener, never had a
reason to reach out, but you hit my air of expertise.
I'm a physical therapist, and while listening to the episode
(50:37):
about crash testing, you ask why do we shrink when
we get older. What happens is we age, guys, is
the enter vertebral disks in our back loose hydration, and
as a result, we shrink. There are six discs in
the cervical spine, twelve discs in the thoracic spine, and
five discs in the lambar. If each disc were to
(50:59):
lose a minimum one sixteenth of an inch in height,
that adds up pretty quickly and you can easily lose
an inch plus in your lifetime.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
The other thing to consider as we age, as our
muscles and tissues get tighter, pulls us into positions of
poor posture. That's right, and this restricts our ability to
stand up straight. You combine all these things together and
all of a sudden, Josh isn't going to hit his
goal height of six feet.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
I have to stay on my tippy toes now.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Thanks for all the good work. I hope it didn't
step on the toes of a future short stuff. I
think we just did it. Steve, that's Steve Marima or
Merima from Roscoe, Illinois.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Thanks a lot, Steve. That was a good email. We
appreciate that big time. And if you haven't stumbled upon
it yet, you should check out our episode on Circopania.
It is old, but it was interesting.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah. If you have any ethysical therapy needs in Illinois,
give Steve a call. Sounds good guy.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, head to beautiful Roscoe, Illinois. Come on, if you
want to be like Steve from Roscoe and give us
some more info that we were asking for. We love
that kind of stuff. You can send it to us
via email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, friends, It's Josh. For this week's Select I've chosen
our October twenty twenty one episode a noise pollution, which
is actually an overlooked hazard to our health and it's
even been shown to cause death in some cases. Plus
it guest stars the worst thing in the world, the
gas powered leaf blower, and we get to the bottom
(00:21):
of why they're so terrible. Plus there's plenty more amazing,
action packed stuff, So kick back and enjoy this episode
on noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The Can I tell people what just happened?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
After going on fourteen.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Years coming up? Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In April Jerry hit record and you went, Hey, everybody, Wait,
I've been having a.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Lot of trouble with my brain lately. I think I'm
just Hey, I think you're doing great. I don't know
if I told you. Thank you. I think you're doing
great too. I don't know if I told you, But
I had trouble remembering how to what six plus seven
added together to? Did I tell you that the other day?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That sounds familiar?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That really bothered me. Man, Yeah, and that's like my
favorite number, and it's like I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I was putting my daughter to bed the other night
and as she was going to sleep, literally falling asleep, daddy,
what's four plus four?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Eight?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
What's six plus two? It's also eight?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
She's learning math, and you know that first stuff you
learn is literally just that simple addition. Yeah, and it's
just funny to think about, like, wow, that's what's on
her mind right now.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah. But also she's learning acceptance too. It's unquestioning.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Can I tell people how you spelled this document that
you sent my way for this noise pollution episode?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Sure? Boy, you're just laying it all out there, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
It was fun because it looked like a heavy metal band.
It was n O I ze p O I think
it was p O l l U s h U
N Yeah, And looking at it on paper was like, oh, man,
that's that's a good bad band.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah name it is like that's a that's a good
name for a made up band in a movie.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Like Wild stallions, Yes, Bill and Ted.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, although that's tough to compete with, you know it is.
I also think we should, uh, we should give a
little CoA here. I think it's one impossible for you
and I not to turn into old men complaining about
like loud music and loud mufflers and stuff in this episode.
So it's gonna happen. I think everybody who knows us
(03:06):
and saw the title this one knew it was gonna happen.
But let's just put it on the table now.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, and it's also funny you mentioned this because I
did mention noise pollution. I introduced that concept to my
daughter the other day and said, you know. She was like, well,
what's that And I said, well, it's as bad as
trash on the road, but it's noise that's doing it
and you should be aware of it. And she was like,
oh okay. And I guess it never occurred to me
(03:32):
that like loud noises for kids, unless it's something that
really bothers them, is just part of life.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Sure, it definitely seems to become more bothersome the older
you get.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I think I don't know why, but I'm going to
hypothesize that it's because you grow to learn that it
doesn't have to be that way, and you come to
really resent the things and the people who are making
it so.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, and I think that's why people One reason people
retire to the country or something like that, if they've
lived in the city their whole life. M h. Just
a little more tranquil, perhaps even bucolic lifestyle. Yeah, quieter,
and there's a lot of science behind it. It's not
just like, oh, I don't want to hear those noises,
(04:19):
as you will see throughout this episode, it is it's bad.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
For your health. Hey, speaking of retirement, have you seen
that documentary on the villages I have? It is bonkers?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, I saw it actually when I had COVID, I
went on a documentary binge and that was one of them.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Man, it was like one of the most disturbing documentaries
I've ever seen, and I've seen like Dear Zachary, and
somehow it was like up there with it.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
It was good man that I mean, I don't want
to give anything, but the one guy that was you know,
the sort of discos too. Sure, Yeah, that was It's
kind of funny at first, but then that got really sad. Too, Yes,
a lot of layers.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And all of it was incredibly sad.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I was highly recommended.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, just bizarre man. And then I was watching the
credits and I saw Darren Aronofsky was an executive producer.
I'm like, okay, nothing suddenly clicked a little more.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I thought a great idea for a movie would be
a setting like that. You couldn't call it that because
it's sure proprietary, but the town set it. Yeah, a
setting just like that where they wake up one day
and there's been a murder and then, like you know,
Kyle McLaughlin, it's kind of a twin peaksy thing, you know,
the stranger from a strange land comes in to investigate
a murder in a very unlikely place and all the
(05:33):
sort of weirdos there. I think that would be a
cool movie, yeah, or TV show.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Sure, well, I mean that is twin Peaks basically, right.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
But you could if you said it in a retirement
community in Florida, people wouldn't recognize.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
You could just walk away, dust in your hands off,
like job well done.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
There's plenty of things that have done that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
It's not just twin Peaks, sure, I know, just nobody
did it better than twin peaks, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Agreed, all right, So noise pollution. I think the fact
of the podcast to me came right up front in
that I never thought of the fact that a decibel
was a tenth of a bull or a bell.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Which his name is DESI right there. Yeah, I know,
I never thought of it either, because you never hear
of any other variation, and it's like one decibel, ten decibels,
one hundred decibels, you know, and apparently a bowl or
a bell b e l is named after Alexander Graham
Bell too.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Didn't know that either.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And the reason why we why a decibel is used,
which is one tenth of a bell, is because a decibel,
a one tenth of a bell difference in sound is
the lowest, the smallest difference that humans can detect, right,
So we trade in decibels here on the level.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And we trade in an algorithm when we talk decibels,
because it's one of those weird things where it's not
like one hundred decibels, is it twice as loud as
fifty decibels, it's spit into an equation that's actually one
hundred thousand times as loud.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, So like ten decibels. The difference between ten decibels
and twenty decibels is twenty decibels is ten times louder.
The difference between ten decibels and thirty decibels thirty decibels
is one hundred times louder.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
It's long riz right, and zero dbs as we'll call them.
That is the threshold of human hearing period, and one
hundred and forty decibels is about where you can start
to experience literal physical pain from a sound.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, I saw between one hundred and twenty and one
hundred and forty.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, it ranges like I mean, I've been to some
loud concerts and small venues.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, Dinosaur Junior at Variety Theater was it for me.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I was just about to say, Dinosaur Junior. They're one
of the legendary loud bands.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
It was insane.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It is super loud. But it's not like I don't
remember feeling pain, but I do remember feeling discomforted. A
couple of these where I was like, jeezu, this is like,
I like my music loud, but this is a little.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Much, dude. Yeah, Like I don't wear earplugs. I wore
earplugs in that, and I was like, I'm saving myself
right now. It was so loud, and I meant to
say Variety Playhouse, not Variety Theater.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, because we played there before. We don't want to disrespect. No,
I know, you know they've but all of this to say,
God bless j Mascus.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, no, it's great, but it was really loud.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
What about this conversation that we're having. What is that?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, it depends a normal conversation something around sixty decibels.
And I saw that. That's people standing about a meter
apart speaking without raising their voices. That's sixty decibels right there.
For a reference.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
What about a car?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Cars are about ten times louder to ten hundred to
one thousand times louder than normal conversation, depending on the
car of the truck, between seventy and ninety decibels.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
What about an airplane or cat siren?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So you would think, okay, a normal conversation is sixty decibels,
an airplane being one hundred and twenty decibels is twice
as loud. No, my friend, it's one hundred thousand. It's
one hundred thousand times louder. An airplane is one hundred
thousand times louder than a normal conversation if it reaches
(09:15):
one hundred and twenty decibels.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
All right, if you've ever been on a tarmac, like
a live tarmac and herd a plane kind of landing
or taking off, you that's just some loud stuff. Yes,
And that's why they wear those cans on their ears.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, they and they definitely should because we're starting to
realize that there's all sorts of hearing loss besides the
traditional ones that you can pick up on a regular
hearing test. There's something called hidden hearing loss that we're
just starting to get our eyes or mind around where
the structure of your hearing apparatus in your ear, the
little cilia that's almost like a venus flytrap trigger hair,
(09:51):
but for sound instead, like those things can be intact,
but the neurons that form the chain between your ear
and your brain can be permanently damaged, so that the
sound that gets to your brain is garbled or are
partially missing. And that's a huge thing that can happen
at much lower intensity than we understood before. And speaking
(10:14):
of intensity, I think we should say real quick a
decibel to us humans we basically talk in decibels as
like a measure of volume, because that's what it appears
to like us, like an increase in decibels is an
increase in the volume of the sound. But really what
a decibel is measuring is the intensity of the disturbance
of an air of the air that something has made.
(10:37):
So if you're really close to that disturbance, it's going
to be a very intense exposure to your ear. If
you're further away, it's going to be a much less
intense intense exposure because it kind of dissipates over distances.
But to you, it's just registering is a difference in volume,
where really it's a difference in the intensity of the
wave that's being produced that's traveling through the air.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That's right, And uh, this is all sound, Yes, that's
not noise. Noise is different. Noise is what we're talking
about mainly, and noise is classified as unwanted sound and.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
That simple enough.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, that can vary depending on who you are. Obviously,
you know, the sound of your significant other's voice after
forty years may be noise to you asking for some tea.
The sound of a Harley Davidson motorcycle being rebbed up
in front of your house might be noise. Or those
(11:32):
those blowers that used to hate and how they give
you love and use.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I still don't love it, and I went battery powered,
but it's still even while I'm using, I'm like, I'm
a terrible person.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
But you get it done quickly, probably right, so quick.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So quick. I'm like mincing and prancing, just getting a ton.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And there's a lot of kinds of different noise sometimes,
Like let's say you work in a in a machine
shop or something and you use a machine, Like the
sound the machine makes is like it's not necessary, but
it's a byproduct. It's a result of the machine working correctly.
(12:11):
It's not like, well, let's just make this thing loud.
It's like, well, I'm sorry, a jackammer is going to
be loud because that's just the way it goes. You
can our jackammer episode is fantastic. So that sound isn't
necessarily noise, but the intensity and repetition of that sound
makes it becomes noise.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's an unwanted intensity, or it can just
the sound existing itself, like you're saying, like a leaf
blower just an unwanted existence of sound. So either way,
the operative thing is it's unwanted sound. That's the key, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
This is another cool fact of the episode, I think,
is that they think that as late as through the
nineteen forties and into nineteen fifty, natural sounds were still
the dominant sounds that you heard, and then things really changed.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, because there's a there's a big qualifier that a
lot of researchers make that and not everybody does, But
that noise is by definition human caused, right, like either
we're yelling or whatever, or one of the machines that
we've created is making noise. But that you wouldn't say,
like the sound of that waterfall is noise, Like we
(13:22):
don't think of like natural sounds typically as noise. It's
just sounds. And as we'll see, it's probably because we
have been living, like our species has been living around
those sounds and has definitively excluded them as threatening, so
that they're they don't they don't produce like an irritation
in us. They just are sound, almost regardless of how
(13:46):
intense they.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Are, right, And that and again that irritation is subjective
because that rock concert that I enjoy. Someone else might
call that noise that that Space Shuttle launch that is
super loudud might be noise to some people, but to others,
you know, it's the same sound, but they they don't
think of it as noise because they're excited and exhilarated
(14:10):
in the moment to see and hear that thing.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah. So, you know, the other night, the inspiration for
Crew came back on the Dragon capsule. Did you watch that?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
No? Did you see it live?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
We didn't see it because they splashed down in the Atlantic,
but we heard the sonic boom it made when it
came back into the atmosphere over Florida. It was a
stounding that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Did you see that doasonic boom? No? I didn't.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Oh, it's really good. It starts off like, oh god,
this is not good. This is like a terrible corporate ad,
and then it really starts to find its feet. It's
crazy how it evolves over like just the first couple episodes.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I gotta see it.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
It's good. It's definitely worth seeing.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
What other kinds of noise you got? Industrial noise, which
that's classified as kind of from the beginning of the
p process all the way to the end of any
kind of industrial process, and that's basically called continuous noise
from you know, raw materials all the way to the
to the end disposal of whatever byproducts can usually cause
a lot of racket.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah. So like you know, like like a generator humming
or something like that, there's not a lot of variation
and intensity. It's basically this hum or steam being released,
or even like a rhythmic like a like something being
like hammered, No, not hammered. That's a different that's called
(15:35):
the impulsive noise, but just something that doesn't really vary.
It's just kind of a monotonous sound. That's that's this
kind of a subcategory called continuous sound. And it just
so happens that most industrial processes are continuous in nature.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right, whereas a train going by your house, or a
plane flying or a car going by or a siren
is intermittent.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah. And then also you could probably say, like if
you held the trigger down on a backpack leaf blower,
which again is the worst thing that anyone's ever invented,
but if you held it down, that would be a
continuous sound for the whole time it was going. But
no one does that ever, they just rev in this
arrhythmic pattern that your brain is just giving its all
(16:22):
to try to try to find a pattern in. And
so you get worn out and irritated so quickly because
of those things, because they don't follow rhyme a reason.
And in conjunction with that, it's an intermittent sound, which is,
from what I can tell, one of the worst sounds
for us.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Right. And then you've also got community noise, which is
just people noise. I think the leaf blowers are thrown
into that lawnmowers, you know, if you got a festival
in your neighborhood, or fireworks on the Fourth of July,
or people playing their music in their cards or their houses.
This is all just sort of people generated community sound.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeap. So those are basically the three categories that I saw.
Industrial trafficking, community.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I think we should.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
All right, We'll be right back. I gotta go quiet
down that racket outside. I'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Okay, Do you finished shaking your fist at those teenagers
on your lawn.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I'm lucky because we don't have loud. We don't have
one neighbor on one side, and our neighbor beside us
is pretty quiet, but I do live near and I've
talked about it before, a pretty main road and you
kind of get used to it. But I also yearn
you know, to be a few blocks in. But you know,
you can't pick up your house and move it. So
what are you gonna do? You get used to it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
You can, but it's really expensive.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Well, no, that is true. You can move a house sometimes.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Didn't we do an episode on that once?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
How to Move a House?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I think I don't know if we did one just
on that. It may have been like historic districts or something.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And by the way, that episode we couldn't think of
the other day was crumple Zones.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Oh boy, so we did do a whole episode on
crumple zones.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
We did.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Boy, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel there.
But I remember that being an interesting episode though.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
It was totally interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, Well that's the stuff you should know, way, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Chunk it is? Indeed, should we talk about hearing damage?
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, So, like I was saying, there's that kind of
new type of hearing damage that we're wrapping our minds
around that is like the death of the neurons that
are supposed to transmit the electrical impulse to the brain,
And so we don't hear very well. Our communication is garbled.
And yet you can pass a traditional hearing test no problem.
(18:59):
But other research is really starting to unfold like less
predictable ways that noise and noise pollution actually affects our health.
And it's like our entire system is negatively affected by
noise and noise exposure.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It is, and it basically at the beginning of the
whole process is triggering the same exact thing that triggers
your fight or flight response, Like you're gonna have the
same reaction to you know, if you hear a siren
go by, the same thing is happening in your as
far as your brain knows. Then what happens if like
(19:38):
a bear walks up to you and roars right?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, So, like our hearing is always on and it's
always on the lookout for a potential threat, And one
of the ways that a potential threat can give itself
away is by making a sound. Right. It was, like
I was saying earlier, like we've been around waterfalls and
the sound of waves in our evolutionary history for so
long that basically it seems like when you're born, you
(20:02):
come equipped with this. Don't worry about that sound. Actually
you can be soothed by it. It's not something that
should stimulate your fighter flight response. But we've lived around
industrial machinery and the sound of a text message or
a leaf blower, the stupid leaf blowers for such a
little amount of our evolutionary history that our minds are
(20:24):
not at all attuned to those things, or we haven't
kind of adopted this idea that a leaf blower is
non threatening and so it stimulates the fighter flight response
and is when we hear it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That's right. So you're going to hear that sound you're amigdalah,
which we've talked about plenty, contributes to emotional processing, is
going to send that same distress signal to the hypothalamus.
And again that gets if you are in a fight
or flight response, which is why you probably want to
run screaming if you hear too many sirens you're here
(20:57):
too many leaf blowers, sure, and then that's going to
signal your adrenal glands to get your adrenaline going. And
I believe cortisol gets going as well. Yes, it's like
literally mimicking fight or flight.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, And so they figured out that like people who
are continuously chronically exposed to sound, like say people who
live like really close to an airport, are really close
to the subway tracks, or people who work in a
really noisy factory, they have all sorts of crazy random
health problems, Like their kids sometimes have low birth weight. Obviously,
(21:33):
they can develop tonitis, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Their children
who are exposed to chronic noise can have cognitive impairments,
high blood pressure, like all sorts of crazy stuff. And
so you think, well, okay, that's like, that's terrible anybody
who has to live near noise or work near noise,
(21:54):
like we should do something about that. But it's even
worse than that, Like, noise pollution is even more in
citia than that because you don't have to be chronically
exposed to it. You don't have to live in a
place where you're like, this is an objectively noisy place
that I live or work in to still suffer from
the effects of noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, I mean it can affect you when you're sleep because,
like you said, your ears are always on. It's not
like you go to sleep and the ear say, well,
I'm going to take a nice break. That would be
a fantastic evolutionary adaptation. Actually, yeah, well actually it would
be terrible.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
It would these days. It wouldn't be days. It would
be great the Mountain, the Mountain, Lion Sabertooth Tiger days.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, it'd be nice if there was a switch and
you could kind of control that.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Oh, it'd be so nice. I think the switch is
the white noise wave machine. Is that switch?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, which I've gotten addicted to such that I have
to travel with them now.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, everywhere I go I've heard that. Yeah. Basically, once
you start, you can't go back.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, I like it, though, I do. Brown noise is
my drug of choice.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
It sounds so gross, though brown.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I make a brown noise every morning, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Wow, I was not expecting Dangerfield to make an appearance.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well that's what you meant, right, poop or no?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah? I mean I guess anytime I hear brown, I
think it's poop.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You know, you think of that or you think of
ween the band.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Did they have a brown song or album?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
They talk about the brown thing, the brown sound and
brown is just sort of their color and how they
used to talk about sound. And I've heard other groups
talk about brown sounds.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
So what does brown sound sound like?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, brown noise, you know if white noises, brown noises.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Okays middle.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, it's sort of a lower lower end. And if
you actually play it through a speaker, like if you
put it on your phone and play it through a
little bluetooth, you can get some good bass and it
just it really works wonders for me, I.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Should try brown noise or even white noise. I've been
using chrome noise where it's like and it's really not
helping me sleep at all. You like?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
You like I have the sound of an early Internet
connection being made of a constant. Did they ever name that?
They should have named that be great.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
To Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I just call it whatever it was.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
They called it the tickety wichet, right.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Interrupted sleep though, that's that's the big problem, or one
of the big problems, because your ears are always on.
If you have interrupted sleep or poor sleep overall, you're
gonna be tired. Obviously, your creativity, your memory can get impaired.
Your creativity is gonna be low. You're gonna have impaired judgment,
your psychomotor skills might be impacted. You might have more headaches.
(24:44):
They've done studies. If you live near airports and stuff
like that, or you know, next to like a rail yard,
you're gonna have more headaches, you might take more sleeping
pills as a result, you might be more prone to
minor accidents, and you are going to be more prone
to seek psychiatric treatment in your life. They like studies
have shown this.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, there's a study of people living near European airports.
They found a ten decibel increase in aircraft noise was
associated with a twenty eight percent increase in anxiety medication,
and that people were also likelier to have like twenty
five percent more likely to have symptoms of depression. So again,
(25:24):
all this is just from like having not good sleep,
which is bad enough, but apparently Chuck it even gets
worse because even if your sleep isn't disturbed where you're
waking up and not getting sleep because.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Of noise, right, like you get used to it sort of.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Uh huh, the noise is still affecting you while you're
sleeping because again, your ear never turns off. It's always
on the listen out for some sort of threat creeping
up on you. And so if you're exposed to noise
while you're sleeping, it still has that stress effect on you.
And what they've figured out is that one of the
problems of just being chronically stressed through something like noise
(26:02):
and I think stress in general, is that it affects
I think it's called the end of thelium, which is
the lining of your blood vessels, and they respond to
chemicals that tell them to constrict to relax, and they
get constricted when they get stressed, when they're exposed to stress,
like cortisol or something like that comes along and says constrict.
(26:25):
And when they do that, you get high blood pressure,
you can end up with heart disease, you can end
up suffering from heart attacks. And what's insane is they
figured out that after one night of being exposed while
you're sleeping to something like train sounds, your endothelium starts suffering,
(26:46):
like it doesn't function as well after just one night
of that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Right, Like, isn't the idea that you can have no
other sort of poor health markers and it can actually
be brought on because of this noise?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Right, Yes, while you're sleeping you're still getting sleep, but
it's still happening to you while you're sleeping. And not
only like high blood pressure or like a heart attack
or something like that coming down the road, but also
like diabetes, obesity. There's a lot of things that we're
figuring out are tied to the lining of the blood
vessels and whether they're healthy or not. It's a huge
(27:22):
predictor of a whole range of diseases. And when you
hear noise, that's your stressors trigger your endothelium to constrict,
and that is a really bad thing.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
It is here in the United States. We kind of
started studying the stuff in earnest in the seventies. That
was when pollution was a big deal just all around
in the United States, and we started to say things like, hey,
maybe you shouldn't just have a family picnic and then
just pick up your blanket and dump all the trash
(27:55):
on the ground like they did on that episode of
Mad Men.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And Anchor Man when they're all eating McDonald's and they
throw it on the ground.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
I saw a guy throw a fully like McDonald's thing
out the window the other day and smashed on the sidewalk.
Oh my god. And I was just like, who who
does that? Still?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, that's the problem is we're at a place in
our country's history where if you confront people like that,
there's a chance you're going to get shot for confronting
someone like that. But I don't confront But that's like,
that is the kind of behavior you should, under normal circumstances,
non shooting circumstances, feel perfectly fine confronting somebody about and
being like what is wrong with you? Like, we're so
(28:36):
far beyond that, Like everyone knows you shouldn't do that.
It's just, Oh, it drove me insane.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I got to a good fight with him in my brain.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yes, I know, Like what, Like, where's the solution, where's
the answer?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I don't know, man. I think the zen path is
you go pick up that McDonald's cup and throw it
away totally and and say a prayer for that person
good luck. So yeah, New York is where they started
studying this stuff in the seventies because it was kind
of wrapped up, like I said, folded into larger pollution studies.
They're like, well, we might as well talk about noise pollution.
(29:12):
New York is a place to do it, and they
did there were a couple of studies in the nineteen
seventies about subway noise that really sort of gave put
the whole thing on some terra firma as far as
the health effects and learning effects. In the case of
kids at PS ninety eight Manhattan, it was very close
to the train tracks there, the subway train tracks, like
(29:34):
real close, yeah, like two hundred and twenty feet away.
And they found and this is pretty startling, they found
that the kids that were closest to the train tracks
were eleven months behind their classmates that were on the
other side of the school.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, on like not in another school, just on the
other side of the school.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, almost a full well, I mean that is basically
a full school year, yeah, because you know, with summers
off and stuff, that's an academic year plus that they
were behind. And they installed acoustic tiles in the classroom
and some dampening devices, and they did a follow up
study and the gap had closed basically, So I mean
(30:16):
there's proof right there, like your kids are not learning
as well if they're near that subway noise.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
There's another kind of landmark study in the seventies in
New York that established the concept of noise pollution at
a place called the Bridges apartment high rise, or a
cluster of them in Manhattan that I believe ninety five
maybe drives under or really really close, and the traffic
(30:42):
noise is so bad that even as high up as
the eighth floor, the traffic sound is about the level
of a vacuum cleaner. And like just sitting in your apartment,
you have to raise your voice to be heard, which
I mean, just the stress of that I can't imagine.
Like that's an inhabitable, uninhabitable place. I believe people are
(31:04):
still living there as well. But this study found that
children living there were far behind at reading comprehension, at
listening comprehension, and just weren't learning as quickly as other
kids their age who did not live in the Bridges.
So those two studies together from New York kind of
(31:26):
established this idea like, Okay, there's a real problem with
noise pollution, and then it just went away for many,
many years until about twenty eleven when the who there
was a bunch of other studies a lot of the
other ones that we've referenced so far came out around
twenty ten twenty eleven twenty thirteen. I'm not sure what
exactly kicked it off, but there was a big spade
(31:47):
of them. But then the WHO released a really big report.
Not that Who, the band, the World Health Organization.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
They're another loud band actually, and.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, they felt terribly guilty about causing hearing loss in
their their fans, so they launched this study of basically
all of Western Europe. They looked at i think something
like five hundred different studies and did a meta analysis
of them to calculate what's called the disability adjusted life
(32:17):
years or dailies that were lost in Europe every year
to noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, And the idea of a daily is they basically say,
it's like the healthy years of your life that end
up being lost to this human made noise that you're
living with. Right, And it's kind of a sort of
an esoteric way to think about it, but once you
wrap your head around it, it makes a little bit more sense.
(32:45):
But they found that at least one million healthy years
of life are lost every single year only just in
Europe due to noise pollution. A million healthy years of
people's lives right annually.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, and that means because of all of the disease
burden that noise pollution produces in humans. That that's how
much of our healthy lifespan is shaved off every year collectively,
or how much Europe's is. And they did a follow
up study in twenty eighteen, Chuck, and found that actually, no,
we got it wrong. It's one point eight million dailies
(33:21):
are lost in Western Europe alone each year. So they
definitely established through these couple of who studies, like, noise
pollution is still a thing and we should probably do
something about it. And there was another study that was
released this past year that said, yes, dailies are significant,
but we may have found a link that shows that
(33:43):
noise pollution can actually straight up kill you under some
circumstances potentially.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, And this one was this is pretty startling because
they looked at heart well not necessarily a heart attack,
but nighttime deaths. No, I guess it was heart attack, yes,
but if you die overnight, die in your sleep quote
unquote from heart attacks and the link to commercial aircraft
flying over your house. And I guess they had a
(34:11):
way to sort of cancel out all the other factors.
And they got down to the nitty gritty that three
percent of all night time deaths from heart attacks can
be attributed to the sound of aircraft flying overhead while
you're sleeping.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yep, that's just like that was it. That was the
last stress response that your body could handle, and you
had a heart attack and died from that sound. They said, like, Okay,
we found a definite correlation, but if there is causation here,
then we can talk up about three percent of those.
That's astounding.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
It is astounding. We're going to take a break. That's
the human grossness, and we'll talk about the awful things
that we're doing to our animal friends and nature right
after this. All right, We talked about a lot of
(35:20):
studies that basically all added up to noise pollution very
bad for human beings, like literally bad for their health.
And I know we've talked about a few of these
before over the years, especially when it comes to whales,
but all manner of Mother nature are impacted by this noise.
(35:40):
They did a study in the early two thousands about
stress hormones.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
For what kind of whales were they right whales.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Right whales in the Bay of Fundy, And they saw,
and this is remarkable, they saw a really weird unexplained
declined in the stress hormone concentrations that went away and
then came back up again, and they eventually realized it
was a halt in the shipping in the bay after
nine to eleven happened.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah, because shipping is probably humans' noisiest marine endeavor that
we do all the time constantly. And the idea of
a break in that having being connected to a huge
decline in stress hormones in whale poop, that's significant. But
it was an accidental discovery, and I think it led
(36:28):
other people to start studying stuff like that, like the
effects of noise on wildlife. And there was this I
think you University of Idaho. I'm sorry if it's Idaho state,
please don't be mad. I think it's Idaho, okay, a
study from twenty twelve where researchers set up like what
they called a phantom road, which is basically they have
fixed a line of loudspeakers to some trees out in
(36:51):
the wilderness that stretched about a half a mile in length,
and they just played road and traffic noise out like
city stuff, just like the kind of stuff that possibly
a remote road through the wilderness would sound like. Because
They recorded it in Glacier National Park on a road there,
and just from that, just from like this rural Glacier
(37:14):
National Park road noise, something like more than a quarter
of all the birds in the area just left. They
were like, we're moving. Yeah, we're going to Canada. So'd
everybody in the United States.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah, you know, I think I definitely noticed, and I
heard other people talk about in like April of last
year when things really slowed down commuter and traffic wise
due to the pandemic. And I don't think it was
just our imaginations, but there were there was a lot
more bird activity going on, and I remember, I think
(37:50):
I remember us even talking about it, or maybe it
was just quieter for us, so we noticed the more
or maybe a combination of both, but there was a difference.
And when you know, when shipping stops after nine to
eleven or when traffic stops, nature says, oh, well the
human a holes are gone. Now we can start behaving
(38:13):
normally again.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, like things are back to normal. And that's I mean,
that's just on land. Also, they found that Idaho study
found that the birds that stuck around lost a bunch
of weight, which they would have needed to migrate, so
maybe they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. But
that was the land study. There's been other studies on land,
but it seems like the we're doing a lot of
(38:35):
damage to marine ecosystems as well, like probably even more
because sound waves travel in water a lot better than light,
which means that most of the animals that live in
the water have really sensitive hearing. That's what they've evolved
to use to communicate and listen out for, right, So
when we make noise, it's really problematic in marine ecosystems.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, and we make a lot of noise. I mean
that shipping activity we talked about is super disruptive to
anything underwater. When they search for mineral deposits on the
seafloor or under the sea floor, they use these seismic
air guns that are you can hear those things like
a fish can hear that a thousands of miles away.
(39:16):
Very disruptive. Sonar. I know we talked about sonar in
an episode years ago and how that affected marine life.
I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Did we do an entire episode on the time they
blew up the beach to whale? Like what to do
with the beach whale.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Maybe, but they basically kind of say now, like they
think the reasons whales beach themselves is because of these
noises and sonar is a big culprit.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Right, Like it just drives them out of the water,
which sounds bonkers. But if you ever think about how
humans sometimes jump from tall buildings rather than being burned
by the intensity of a fire, I think it's virtually
the same principle. Sure, so we are we have become
aware of just how much noise pollution affects not just us,
(40:03):
but the environment as well. Like it is a form
of pollution, and it seems like, you know, it started
to accumulate in the last few years, but really we've
known for a good fifty years that noise pollution is
really bad for everybody, and yet we've done almost nothing
about it. But we had the start, Chuck, We started
out like we were going to like almost immediately when
(40:26):
we realized how bad noise pollution was. In the seventies,
we started to do something about it, and the federal
government passed like three and actually I saw a fourth
one huge acts that had to do with basically controlling
noise pollution.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, either controlling noise pollution for people in general, or
through OSHA, making sure people were working in safe conditions,
or at least had you know, the earcns and things
they needed to work safely. And it was, like you said,
it was headed in the right direction. We knew it
was bad, and we were trying to stop it. And
then the Reagan administration came along and said, nuts to that,
(41:02):
that's federal regulation. Let's just leave it to the states.
Because you ask any governor of any state and they'll
tell you their citizens know to do the right thing,
and they'll do that right thing. And so we'll just
leave it up to the states and let them they
volunteer to phase itself out. The Office of Noise and
Abatement Control on paper still exists, but Congress said, you know,
(41:24):
let's just not fund them anymore, and let's keep these
laws on the books, but really not worry about it
too much because the states will take care of it, right,
because states always do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, And the states, of course did absolutely nothing, and
it's partially because they can't do a lot about it.
A lot of noise is really best understood, studied, and
regulated by the federal government. Like what, like Georgia has
a bunch of money reserved to study the effects of
noise on humans. Like, no, that's totally a federal kind
(41:53):
of thing to do, you know, And that's what some
of those seventies acts set up, like that Office of
Noise Abatement and Control or Noise Controlling the Baby, Like
its purpose was to study that kind of stuff. That's
not what states do. So the states have, well not
the states, but usually more municipalities and counties have. They
have taken steps to kind of mitigate sound pollution, Like
(42:15):
there's your noise pollution. There's usually regulations on how early
or late a landscaping crew can work within the city limits,
or some of them say like you can't boom your
stereo or you're not allowed to have that broken glass
muffler on your Harley. Like there's some stuff like that.
But then like if you live kind of under a
(42:35):
flight path, if your town wanted to say, you know what,
you can't fly over our town and wake everybody up
between you know, twelve at night and seven in the morning,
you can't fly an airplane over it. The airplanes would
just be like like I didn't hear you, Sorry, I
was listening to the FEDS who say you can't make
laws like that.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yeah, and you know, I get the feeling with municipalities.
It is more like complaints from neighbors kind of noise
or the lawn cruise in construction like you were saying,
unless like stuff with big teeth recently. Weird reason I
won't get into, but I was looking up noise ordinances
and Athens, Georgia, and they're kind of funny when you
(43:16):
look at these noise ordinances. It's like it literally said,
like you know, walking down the sidewalk yelling at one another,
talking about basically drunk kids, you know, like the French
quarter kind of thing. It said, you know, this includes
hooting and hollering, and it was something about being able
to hear you from like three hundred feet away, but
(43:38):
or noise from your apartment. But it's you know, it's
like good luck with that. Like you can call the
cops on someone maybe, yeah, but there's no teeth or
or or what do you call it when you or
enforcement kind of with a lot of this stuff, aside
from singling out people when it happens in the moment
and you may get a cop come by and say,
turn it down.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
But even if if there's a will to do something,
it depends on if it's like rail traffic or air traffic.
Like the federal the federal government ties local towns and
counties hands like they can't do anything about it, and
there's as a result, there's a lot of noise pollution
that people can't do anything about. There's a there's a
town in Canada. I can't remember the name of it,
(44:21):
but it is. It's got rail like a rail system
that goes through it, and it doesn't have like alarms
or like the arms that come down. So trains have
to honk their horns at least three times as they
cross through this town. And there's a bunch of different crossings,
and they calculated that train horns blair twelve hundred times
(44:44):
a day in this little tiny town. And like obviously
everybody's going nuts, but they can't do anything about it
because the federal government of Canada is in charge of
regulating rail travel like every other developed or industrialized country.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yeah, and even if it's something like Osha and like
you work in a loud factory and they're trying to
regulate that, they say that a they don't cover all
industries they should cover, and when they do, it's very
inconsistently applied. And even when they do apply it inconsistently,
they say that these limits aren't even low enough to
(45:20):
protect all the workers anyway from hearing loss. It said,
OSHA regulations allow workers to be exposed to ninety five
decibels for four hours a day, five days a week
for your entire forty year career. And that's like, you're
going to suffer from hearing loss if that's the case.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah, that's like holding a leaf blower right next to
you for four hours a day, five days a week
for forty years. Like of course you're yeah to lose
your hearing. Like that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Well, and then factor in the other health effects that
no one ever talks about that we mentioned in the
whole first half of this thing, and you have an
unhealthy population if you're stuck in one of those places.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Yeah, so we can sit here and cavetch all day,
which we would love to do. But there are solutions
to this. But I want to point out one more time,
all these solutions are zero thanks to the Reagan administration. Instead,
there's some simple stuff you can do to help us humans,
Like you can change aircraft routes, you can build barriers
(46:18):
along roadways and railways. You can even green it up,
like they found that if you use shrubbery and trees
mixed together so that they basically produce a fence and
you plant them close to the road or close to
the railway rather than close to the place that you're
trying to protect, they do pretty good at reducing the
decibels of the sound the noise pollution coming from the traffic.
(46:42):
That's some easy stuff you can do. And then on
the user end, on the individual's end, there's all sorts
of like acoustic insulation and paneling you can add to
your house to make it a little more soundproof and quieter.
What about this mufflers.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Chuck car mufflers.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, so apparently the ones that make the sound or
not not they're not good.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I mean that they could, they could change that.
The EPA could get involved and say, you know what,
you can't have those kind of mufflers anymore.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Thank god if they did.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
As far as the shipping go, I know, it's always
like a Honda Civic or something that's like tricked out,
like it's some kind of race car as far as
the water goes in the shipping stuff like that. Those
big ships. They found that if they separate the ship's
engine from the hull, they are quieter, much quieter, And
they even found that there is I think there's a
(47:36):
seventy five percent reduction in acoustic energy six to eight decibels,
which is significant. And they also found that it is
less fuel efficient. And if they like retrofitted or kind
of changed the way they built these ships, I don't
know if you can. Well, I guess you can retrofit someone.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Well, yeah, the propellers are what's making them less fuel efficient,
so you can ease not easily, but you can take
off the old propellers and put on new ones.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Right, But it cast a lot of money up front,
like they will save in the long run. And I
think is it pronounced Maersk, the big shipping company. Yeah,
they spend one hundred million bucks to do just eleven
of its ships, So that gives you the idea of
how much it costs. There may be see some efficiencies
if they did more or something, but it's not cheap.
(48:20):
And they have seven hundred and forty ships. They've done eleven, so.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Well, I did see that is actually a very small
fraction of all of the ships involved in shipping that
are responsible for the vast majority of the noise. So
if you did just focus on the worst offenders, it
would have a significant impact.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
There's also a huge amount of noise, apparently underwater noise
that comes from offshore wind farms because of the pile
driver that is moved by up and down by the
blades to help produce the electricity to move the turbine.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And they found that if you just put a perforated
pipe around the pile driver, the pile driver's going to
produce bubbles and those bubbles will dissipate the noise. Almost
all the noise I think like ninety five percent of
the noise coming from those offshore wind farms. That's a
really simple, easy solution.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Just do it people.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, and there's one other thing that I hadn't thought about,
but I saw a couple places, and it really makes sense,
is that the noise pollution we're contributing to marine ecosystems
in particular is just such low hanging fruit that there's
no reason we shouldn't do this. There's some really easy
stuff we can do, Like even re routing shipping lanes
is one thing we can do, and that by doing
(49:33):
that it will actually stabilize marine ecosystems and marine life
so that it will buy us a little time while
we're figuring out much trickier stuff like ocean acidification and
things that are also threats to it. So it's like,
just removing noise pollution would really go a long way
toward extending the I guess the health and vitality of
(49:55):
the oceans while they're you know, while we're combating climate change.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
I love it. Let's get all these things going. Our
health is suffering.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Let's start with the mufflers.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Yeah, that's just annoyance and health.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah. Well, since Chuck said that's just annoyance, of course, everybody,
that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
This one's pretty short and sweet. I just love it
when we get an answer about something. I think I
might have known this at some point, but we talked
about shrinking as humans. And this is from Steve in Roscoe, Illinois.
He says, I've been a longtime listener, never had a
reason to reach out, but you hit my air of expertise.
I'm a physical therapist, and while listening to the episode
(50:37):
about crash testing, you ask why do we shrink when
we get older. What happens is we age, guys, is
the enter vertebral disks in our back loose hydration, and
as a result, we shrink. There are six discs in
the cervical spine, twelve discs in the thoracic spine, and
five discs in the lambar. If each disc were to
(50:59):
lose a minimum one sixteenth of an inch in height,
that adds up pretty quickly and you can easily lose
an inch plus in your lifetime.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
The other thing to consider as we age, as our
muscles and tissues get tighter, pulls us into positions of
poor posture. That's right, and this restricts our ability to
stand up straight. You combine all these things together and
all of a sudden, Josh isn't going to hit his
goal height of six feet.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
I have to stay on my tippy toes now.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Thanks for all the good work. I hope it didn't
step on the toes of a future short stuff. I
think we just did it. Steve, that's Steve Marima or
Merima from Roscoe, Illinois.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Thanks a lot, Steve. That was a good email. We
appreciate that big time. And if you haven't stumbled upon
it yet, you should check out our episode on Circopania.
It is old, but it was interesting.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah. If you have any ethysical therapy needs in Illinois,
give Steve a call. Sounds good guy.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, head to beautiful Roscoe, Illinois. Come on, if you
want to be like Steve from Roscoe and give us
some more info that we were asking for. We love
that kind of stuff. You can send it to us
via email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
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