Lesson 25
Non-auditory effects of noise
What conclusion does the author draw about noise and health in this piece?
Many people in industry and the Services,
who have practical experience of noise,
regard any investigation of this question as a waste of time;
they are not prepared even to admit the possibility that noise affects people.
On the other hand,
those who dislike noise will sometimes use most inadequate evidence
to support their pleas for a quieter society.
This is a pity, because noise abatement really is a good cause,
and it is likely to be discredited if it gets to be associated with bad science.
One allegation often made is that noise produces mental illness.
A recent article in a weekly newspaper, for instance,
was headed with a striking illustration of a lady in a state of considerable distress,
with the caption 'She was yet another victim, reduced to a screaming wreck'.
On turning eagerly to the text, one learns that the lady was a typist
who found the sound of office typewriters worried her more and more
until eventually she had to go into a mental hospital.
Now the snag in this sort of anecdote is of course
that one cannot distinguish cause and effect.
Was the noise a cause of the illness,
or were the complaints about noise merely a symptom?
Another patient might equally well complain
that her neighbours were combining to slander her and persecute her,
and yet one might be cautious about believing this statement.
What is needed in the case of noise
is a study of large numbers of people living under noisy conditions,
to discover whether they are mentally ill more often than other people are.
Some time ago the United States Navy, for instance,
examined a very large number of men working on aircraft carriers:
the study was known as Project Anehin.
It can be unpleasant to live even several miles from an aerodrome;
if you think what it must be like
to share the deck of a ship with several squadrons of jet aircraft,
you will realize that a modern navy is a good place to study noise.
But neither psychiatric interviews nor objective tests
were able to show any effects upon these American sailors.
This result merely confirms earlier American and British studies:
if there is any effect of noise upon mental health,
it must be so small that present methods of psychiatric diagnosis cannot find it.
That does not prove that it does not exist; but it does mean
that noise is less dangerous than, say being brought up in an orphanage
-- which really is a mental health hazard.