Noise Pollution: Causes, Effects and Prevention
What is Noise Pollution?
Noise pollution (also sound pollution, sound disturbance) refers to the excessive and troublesome sound that is injurious to health.
Noise pollution refers to the presence of such levels of noise or sound in the environment that are disturbing, irritating and annoying to living beings.
So, noise pollution is noise that causes discomfort and harm to living being’s mental and physical health. Such noise is considered harmful either physically or psychologically. It is one of the major cause for deafness and other health hazards. Even animals suffer from excessive environmental noise.
In this article, we will further discuss on the following sub-topics of Noise Pollution. Click on the links below to directly jump to the relevant section.
Causes of Noise Pollution
Effects of Noise Pollution
Prevention of Noise Pollution
Causes of Noise pollution
Noise pollution can be caused by several phenomenon including industrial activity, and social activity (such as explosion of fire crackers, loud parties), and surface travel. The many causes of noise pollution are discussed below:
- Fire crackers: Fire crackers are exploded to make huge sound during celebrations and festive occasions. It is common sight to witness the firing of crackers at live concerts.
- Transportation vehicles: Noise pollution is severest in the cities. The different modes of transportation (land, air and water), such as motor-cars, buses, trains, trams, airplanes, etc. produces sound that disturbs the human mind.
- Microphones: The unrestricted use of microphones during social and political events.
- Loud speakers: During social events and other festive occasions, people use loud speakers in unjustified manner.
- Factories and industries: In large cities, there are large number of factories, mills and industries. These industrial sites produce immense environmental noise to disturb the habitats of nearby residential areas.
- Domestic appliances: Even at homes, people use large number of domestic appliances such as grinder, mixer, juicer, etc.
- Loud music: Playing music in high volume,
- Television: Television also causes sound and watching television for long hours in just as harmful for ears as they are for eyes.
- Building and construction sites near residential areas: The building and construction activity involves use of sound producing equipment such as cement-mixer, road-roller, crane, etc.
All the above activities produce enough noise to disturb the health and mind of human-beings and other living bodies.
What are the Causes of Noise Pollution?
Sources of Noise Pollution
Effects of Noise Pollution
Noise pollution affects the human mind and body negatively. The ill-effects of noise pollution are many. It is the major cause for several ailments. The quality of human life gets disrupted. The lives of the children, the aged or the ailing people become miserable.
- Loss of hearing and deafness: Noise above the tolerable threshold is the leading cause for loss of hearing and deafness.
- Cardiac disturbance: Noise increase the risk of cardiac disturbance including coronary artery disease or ischemic heart disease (IHD).
- Sleeplessness: Noise may make people restless and tired. It may cause disrupted sleeping pattern or may keep people away from sound sleep. In the long-term, due to tiredness and lack of sleep, the immune system may get compromised.
- Headache: Human mind can tolerate sound only to a limited extent. Excess noise causes headache.
- Stress, tension and aggressiveness: Loud noises can be very stressful. Constant exposure to irritating sound may cause stress and tension. The behavior of people often becomes aggressive. Other than psychological imbalance, is causes physical illness such as increased blood pressure, cardiac disturbance and insomnia.
- Irregular blood pressure: For good health, it is very important to maintain normal pressure in the arteries both during the heartbeat and between the heartbeat. Noise may contribute to fluctuations in the levels of blood pressure.
- Mental imbalance and nervous debility: Mental illness is among the worst negative effects of noise pollution. People may find it difficult to cope with their normal routine life. Human mind cannot accept sound beyond a certain level. Excess sound may lead to mental imbalance and nervous disability.
- Psychological imbalance: It may also cause psychological imbalance.
- Difficulty in talking: Due to excessive noise, it becomes very difficult to talk on roads or inside malls.
Prevention of Noise Pollution
Some effective measures should be taken too solve the problem. The following measures can be taken to prevent noise pollution:
To prevent and control noise pollution it is necessary to create public awareness. Only law is not sufficient. People must be made aware of the harmful consequences of noise pollution.
People should be made aware that excessive noise beyond certain limits may cause deafness.
They should know that injuries caused by sound pollution are often irreversible.
There should be minimum use of sound producing instruments. There should be proper regulations for the use of loudspeakers and other devices that produce noise beyond that are beyond the toleration limits of human-beings.
The Pollution Control Board and the High Court have already taken effective measures to bring sound pollution under control. Adequate measures should be taken to ensure that noise related restrictions are not violated.
Anti-pollution laws should be enacted and enforced.
Ban of fire crackers should be imposed and electric horns should be replaced by bulb horns.
The use of microphones should be controlled and regulated.
Conclusion
Noise pollution is real. It is not just a mild annoyance. It can negatively effect the lives of both humans and animals. It poses severs threats such as environmental hazards, health problems, habitat loss, etc. It also changes in the ways in which people cohere. As such, we should all make sure that we do not contribute to noise pollution.
