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Noise Pollution: Arrrgh! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
0:16
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. Can I tell
0:21
Speaker 1: people what just happened? Sure? After what going on? Fourteen
0:26
Speaker 1: years coming up? Yeah? And I guess in April Jerry
0:30
Speaker 1: hit record and you went, hey, everybody, Wait, I've been
0:36
Speaker 1: having a lot of trouble with my brain lately. I
0:38
Speaker 1: think I'm just hey, I think you're doing great. I
0:41
Speaker 1: don't know if I told you, thank you. I think
0:43
Speaker 1: you're doing great too. Um, I don't know if I
0:45
Speaker 1: told you that I had trouble remembering how to um
0:49
Speaker 1: what six plus seven added together to the other day?
0:53
Speaker 1: That sounds familiar? That really bother? Yeah, and that's like
0:58
Speaker 1: my favorite number, and it's like I just couldn't do it.
1:02
Speaker 1: I was putting my daughter to bed the other night,
1:04
Speaker 1: and as she was going to sleep, literally falling asleep, daddy,
1:09
Speaker 1: what's four plus four? Eight? Was six plus two? It's
1:14
Speaker 1: also eight? Okay. She's learning math, and you know that
1:20
Speaker 1: first stuff you learn is literally just that simple addition,
1:23
Speaker 1: and it's just funny to think about, like, wow, that's
1:25
Speaker 1: what's on her mind right now. Yeah, but also she's
1:28
Speaker 1: learning acceptance too, just unquestioning. Can I tell people how
1:34
Speaker 1: you spelled this document that you sent my way for
1:38
Speaker 1: this noise pollution episode? Sure? Boy, you're just playing it
1:42
Speaker 1: all out there, aren't you. It was fun because it
1:45
Speaker 1: looked like a heavy metal band. It was n O
1:48
Speaker 1: I Z E p O I think it was p
1:52
Speaker 1: O L l U s h U n Y and
1:57
Speaker 1: looking at him and pay for I was like, oh, man,
1:59
Speaker 1: that's that's a good bad band name. It is, like
2:02
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good name for a made up
2:04
Speaker 1: band in a movie like Wild Stallions. Yes, and yeah,
2:09
Speaker 1: although that's tough to compete with, you know it is. Um.
2:13
Speaker 1: I also think we should, uh, we should give a
2:16
Speaker 1: little c o ay here. I think it's impossible for
2:21
Speaker 1: you and I not to turn into old man complaining
2:25
Speaker 1: about like loud music and loud mufflers and stuff in
2:28
Speaker 1: this episode. So it's gonna happen. I think everybody who
2:31
Speaker 1: knows us and saw the title of this one knew
2:33
Speaker 1: it was going to happen. But let's just put it
2:35
Speaker 1: on the table now. Well and It's also funny you
2:38
Speaker 1: mentioned this because I did mention noise pollution. I introduced
2:41
Speaker 1: that concept to my daughter the other day and said,
2:45
Speaker 1: you know, she was like, well, what's that and I said, well,
2:47
Speaker 1: it's it's as bad as trash on the road, but
2:50
Speaker 1: it's noise that's doing it and you should be aware.
2:53
Speaker 1: And she was like, okay, um. And I guess it
2:57
Speaker 1: never occurred to me that like loud noises for kids,
3:00
Speaker 1: unless it's something that really bothers them, it's just part
3:03
Speaker 1: of life. Sure, it definitely seems to become more bothersome
3:08
Speaker 1: the older you get. Absolutely. I think I don't know why,
3:12
Speaker 1: but I'm going to hypothesize that it's because you grow
3:15
Speaker 1: to learn that it doesn't have to be that way,
3:18
Speaker 1: and if you come to really resent the things and
3:22
Speaker 1: the people who are making it. So yeah, and I
3:25
Speaker 1: think that's why people One reason people retire to the
3:30
Speaker 1: country or something like that, if they've lived in the city,
3:32
Speaker 1: their whole life just a little more tranquil, perhaps even
3:37
Speaker 1: bucolic lifestyle quieter. And there's a lot of science behind
3:42
Speaker 1: It's not just like oh, I don't want to hear
3:44
Speaker 1: those noises. As you will see throughout this episode it
3:47
Speaker 1: is it's bad for your health. Hey, speaking of retirement,
3:50
Speaker 1: have you seen that documentary on the Villages? It is bonkers. Yeah,
3:57
Speaker 1: I saw it um actually when I had COVID when
4:00
Speaker 1: on a documentary binge, and that was one of them. Man,
4:02
Speaker 1: it was like one of the most disturbing documentaries I've
4:05
Speaker 1: ever seen, and I've seen like dear Zachary, and somehow
4:07
Speaker 1: it was like up there with it. It was good
4:10
Speaker 1: man that I mean, I don't want to give anything,
4:12
Speaker 1: but the one guy that was you know, this sort
4:16
Speaker 1: of discosta that was It's kind of funny at first,
4:21
Speaker 1: but then that got really sad to a lot of
4:22
Speaker 1: a lot of layers and all of it was incredibly
4:25
Speaker 1: sad that it was highly recommended. Yeah, just bizarre, man.
4:29
Speaker 1: And then I was watching the credits and I saw
4:31
Speaker 1: Darren aaron Oski was an executive producer. I'm like, okay,
4:35
Speaker 1: you go. Now, thing suddenly clicked a little more. I
4:38
Speaker 1: thought a great idea for a movie would be a
4:40
Speaker 1: setting like that. You couldn't call it that because it's
4:42
Speaker 1: I'm sure proprietary, but the town said, yeah, a setting
4:46
Speaker 1: just like that where they wake up one day and
4:49
Speaker 1: there's been a murder and then like you know, col McLaughlin,
4:52
Speaker 1: it's kind of a twin peaksy thing, you know, the
4:54
Speaker 1: stranger from a strange land comes in to investigate a
4:56
Speaker 1: murder in a very unlikely place and all the sort
4:59
Speaker 1: of or does there I think that would be a
5:01
Speaker 1: cool movie or TV show. Well, I mean that is
5:04
Speaker 1: Twin Peaks basically, right, But you could if you said
5:07
Speaker 1: it in a retirement community in Florida, people, you could
5:11
Speaker 1: just walk away dust in your hands off, like job. Well,
5:14
Speaker 1: there's plenty of things that have done this. It's not
5:16
Speaker 1: just Twin Peaks, sure, I know, just nobody did it
5:18
Speaker 1: better than Twin Peaks. I A um, alright, so noise pollution.
5:23
Speaker 1: I think the fact of the podcast to me came
5:25
Speaker 1: right up front, and that I never thought of the
5:27
Speaker 1: fact that a decibel was a tenth of a bull
5:33
Speaker 1: or a bell, which his name is DECI right there. Yeah,
5:36
Speaker 1: I know, I've never thought of it either, because you
5:38
Speaker 1: never hear of any other variation. It's like one decibel,
5:41
Speaker 1: ten decibles, a hundred decibles, you know. Um. And apparently
5:45
Speaker 1: a bowl or bell b E L is named after
5:48
Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bell too. I didn't know that either. And
5:51
Speaker 1: the reason why we why a decibel is used, which
5:54
Speaker 1: is one tenth of a bell um, is because a decibel,
6:01
Speaker 1: a one tenth of a bell difference in sound is
6:04
Speaker 1: the lowest, the smallest difference that humans can detect. So
6:10
Speaker 1: we trade in decibles here on, and we trade in
6:15
Speaker 1: an algorithm when we talked decibles, because it's one of
6:18
Speaker 1: those weird things where it's not like a hundred decibles,
6:22
Speaker 1: is it twice as loud as fifty decibles. It's spit
6:25
Speaker 1: into an equation that's actually one dred thousand times as loud. Yeah,
6:29
Speaker 1: So so like ten decibles, the difference between ten decibles
6:35
Speaker 1: and twenty decibles is twenty decibles is ten times louder.
6:39
Speaker 1: The difference between ten decibles and thirty decibles, thirty decibles
6:42
Speaker 1: is a hundred times louder. It's logarithms and zero dbs
6:46
Speaker 1: as we'll call them. That is the threshold of human
6:50
Speaker 1: hearing period. And a hundred and forty decibels is about
6:54
Speaker 1: where you can start to experience literal physical pain from
6:58
Speaker 1: a sound. Yeah, I saw between a hundred and twenty
7:01
Speaker 1: and a hundred and forty. Yeah, it ranges like uh,
7:05
Speaker 1: I mean I've been to some loud concerts and small venues. Yeah,
7:10
Speaker 1: Dinosaur Junior at Variety Theater was it for me. I
7:13
Speaker 1: was just about to say, Dinosaur Junior, they're one of
7:15
Speaker 1: the legendary loud bands. It was insane. It is super loud,
7:19
Speaker 1: but it's not like I don't remember feeling pain, but
7:21
Speaker 1: I do remember feeling discomforted a couple of these where
7:24
Speaker 1: I was like, jeez, this is like I like my
7:26
Speaker 1: music loud, but this is a little much. Dude. Yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: like I don't wear your plugs. I wore your plugs
7:31
Speaker 1: in that. And I was like, I'm saving myself right now.
7:33
Speaker 1: It was so loud, and I meant to say Variety
7:35
Speaker 1: Playhouse is not Variety Theater. Yeah, because we played there before.
7:39
Speaker 1: We don't want a dis no, I know you know that.
7:42
Speaker 1: But all of this to say, um god bless Jay Mascus. Yeah, no,
7:46
Speaker 1: it was great, but it was really loud. What about
7:49
Speaker 1: this conversation that we're having. What is that? Well, it
7:52
Speaker 1: depends a normal conversation something around sixty decibls. And I
7:57
Speaker 1: saw that that's people standing about a meter apart um
8:01
Speaker 1: speaking without raising their voices. That's sixty decibles right there.
8:04
Speaker 1: For a reference, What about a car. Cars are about
8:08
Speaker 1: ten times louder to ten hundred to a thousand times
8:11
Speaker 1: louder than normal conversation, depending on the car of the truck,
8:15
Speaker 1: between seventy and ninety deciples. What about an airplane, So
8:20
Speaker 1: you would think, okay, a normal conversation is sixty decibles,
8:24
Speaker 1: airplane being a hundred twenty desciples is twice as loud. No,
8:27
Speaker 1: my friend, it's it's a hundred thousand times louder. An
8:36
Speaker 1: airplane is a hundred thousand times louder than a normal
8:39
Speaker 1: conversation if it reaches a hundred and twenty decibles. All right,
8:43
Speaker 1: If you've ever been on a tarmac, uh like a
8:46
Speaker 1: live tarmac and heard a plane kind of landing or
8:49
Speaker 1: taking off, you that's just some loud stuff. Yes, and
8:52
Speaker 1: that's why they wear those cans on their ears. Yeah,
8:55
Speaker 1: they and they definitely should because we're starting to realize
8:57
Speaker 1: that there's all sorts of hearing loss, sides of the
9:00
Speaker 1: traditional ones that you can pick up on a regular
9:03
Speaker 1: hearing test. There's something called hidden hearing loss that we're
9:05
Speaker 1: just starting to get our mind around, where the structure
9:10
Speaker 1: of your hearing apparatus in your ear, the little sillia
9:14
Speaker 1: that's almost like a venus fly trap trigger hair, but
9:17
Speaker 1: for sound instead. Um like, those things can be intact,
9:21
Speaker 1: but the neurons that form the chain between your ear
9:25
Speaker 1: and your brain can be permanently damaged so that the
9:29
Speaker 1: sound that gets to your brain is garbled or or
9:33
Speaker 1: partially missing. And that's a huge thing that can happen
9:36
Speaker 1: at much lower intensity than than we understood before. And
9:39
Speaker 1: speaking of intensity, I think we should say real quick,
9:42
Speaker 1: a decibel to us humans, we we basically talk in
9:45
Speaker 1: decibels as like a measure of volume, because that's what
9:49
Speaker 1: it appears to like us, like an increase in decibels
9:52
Speaker 1: is an increase in the volume of the sound. But
9:54
Speaker 1: really what a decibels measuring is the intensity of the
9:58
Speaker 1: disturbance of an air of the air that's something has made.
10:03
Speaker 1: So if you're really close to that disturbance, it's going
10:05
Speaker 1: to be a very intense exposure to your ear. If
10:08
Speaker 1: you're further away, it's going to be a much less
10:11
Speaker 1: intense intense exposure because it kind of dissipates over distances.
10:15
Speaker 1: But to you, it's just registering is a difference in volume,
10:18
Speaker 1: where really it's a difference in the intensity of the
10:21
Speaker 1: wave that's being produced that's traveling through the air. That's right.
10:25
Speaker 1: And uh, this is all sound. Yes, that's not noise.
10:29
Speaker 1: Noise is different. Noise is what we're talking about. Mainly.
10:33
Speaker 1: A noise is classified as unwanted sound. Yeah, that can
10:38
Speaker 1: vary depending on who you are, obviously. Uh, you know,
10:42
Speaker 1: the sound of your significant other's voice after forty years,
10:47
Speaker 1: maybe noise to you asking for some tea. The sound
10:51
Speaker 1: of a Harley Davidson motorcycle being rebbed up in front
10:55
Speaker 1: of your house might be noise. Or those uh, those
10:58
Speaker 1: blowers that used to hay until you love and use.
11:02
Speaker 1: I still don't love it, and I went battery powered,
11:04
Speaker 1: but it's still even while I'm using, I'm like, I'm
11:06
Speaker 1: a terrible person. But you get it done quickly, probably right,
11:10
Speaker 1: so quick, so quick. I'm like mincing and prancing, just
11:13
Speaker 1: getting in ton Uh. And there's a lot of kinds
11:16
Speaker 1: of different noise. Um. Sometimes, like let's say you work
11:21
Speaker 1: in a in a machine shop or something and you
11:25
Speaker 1: use a machine, like the the sound the machine makes
11:29
Speaker 1: is like it's not necessary, but it's it's a byproduct. Uh,
11:34
Speaker 1: it's a result of the machine. Working correctly. It's not like, well,
11:38
Speaker 1: let's just make this thing loud. It's like, well, I'm
11:39
Speaker 1: sorry that Jackammer is going to be loud, because that's
11:42
Speaker 1: just the way it goes. My friends are are Jackammer.
11:44
Speaker 1: Episode is fantastic. Um. So that sound isn't necessarily noise,
11:50
Speaker 1: but the intensity and repetition of that sound makes it
11:53
Speaker 1: becomes noise. Yeah. Yeah, it's an unwanted intensity, or it
11:57
Speaker 1: can just the sound existing itself, like you're saying, like
12:00
Speaker 1: a leafblower, just an unwanted existence of sound. So either way,
12:05
Speaker 1: the operative thing is it's unwanted sound. That's the key, right. Yeah.
12:11
Speaker 1: And and this is another cool fact of the episode
12:13
Speaker 1: I think is that, uh they they think that as
12:16
Speaker 1: late as through the nineteen forties and into nineteen fifty,
12:20
Speaker 1: natural sounds were still the dominant sounds that you heard,
12:24
Speaker 1: um and then things really changed. Yeah, because there's a
12:28
Speaker 1: there's a big qualifier that a lot of researchers make
12:30
Speaker 1: that and not everybody does, But that noise is by
12:34
Speaker 1: definition human caused, like either we're yelling or whatever, um
12:40
Speaker 1: or one of the machines that we've created is making noise.
12:43
Speaker 1: But that you wouldn't say, like the sound of that
12:46
Speaker 1: waterfall is noise. Like we don't think of like natural
12:49
Speaker 1: sounds typically as noise. It's just sounds. And as we'll see,
12:53
Speaker 1: it's probably because we have been living, like our species
12:58
Speaker 1: has been living around those sounds and has definitively excluded
13:02
Speaker 1: them as threatening, so that there they don't They don't
13:05
Speaker 1: produce like an irritation in us. They just are sound,
13:10
Speaker 1: almost regardless of how intense they are, right and that
13:15
Speaker 1: and again that irritation is subjective because that rock concert
13:19
Speaker 1: that I enjoy, someone else might call that noise. That uh,
13:23
Speaker 1: that Space Shuttle launch that is super loud might be
13:27
Speaker 1: noise to some people, but to others, you know, it's
13:30
Speaker 1: the same sound, but they they don't think of it
13:33
Speaker 1: as noise because they're excited and exhilarated in the moment
13:36
Speaker 1: to see and hear that thing. Yeah. So you know
13:39
Speaker 1: the other night, Uh, the inspiration for um crew came
13:44
Speaker 1: back on the Dragon Capsule. Did you watch that? No?
13:47
Speaker 1: Did you? Did you see it live? Uh? We didn't
13:49
Speaker 1: see it because they splashed down in the Atlantic, but
13:52
Speaker 1: we heard the sonic boom it made when it came
13:54
Speaker 1: back into the atmosphere over Florida. It was a stounding
13:58
Speaker 1: Did you see that sonic boom? No? I didn't. Oh,
14:01
Speaker 1: it's really good. It starts off like, oh god, this
14:04
Speaker 1: is not good. This is like a terrible corporate ad,
14:08
Speaker 1: and then it really starts to find its feet. It's
14:11
Speaker 1: it's crazy how it evolves over like just the first
14:13
Speaker 1: couple episodes. I gotta see it. It's good. It's definitely
14:17
Speaker 1: worth seeing. Um what other kinds of noise. You've got
14:20
Speaker 1: industrial noise, which that's classified as kind of from the
14:24
Speaker 1: beginning of the process all the way to the end
14:27
Speaker 1: of any kind of industrial process, and that's basically called
14:31
Speaker 1: continuous noise. Uh, from you know, raw materials all the
14:35
Speaker 1: way to the to the end disposal of whatever byproducts
14:38
Speaker 1: can usually cause a lot of racket. Yeah. So like
14:41
Speaker 1: you know, like um, like a generator humming or something
14:44
Speaker 1: like that. There's not a lot of variation in intensity.
14:46
Speaker 1: It's basically this um or steam being released or even
14:52
Speaker 1: like a rhythmic like um, like a like something being
14:57
Speaker 1: like hammered, no, not hammered. That a difference that's called
15:00
Speaker 1: the impulsive noise. But um, just something that doesn't really vary.
15:04
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a monotonous sound. That's that's this
15:08
Speaker 1: kind of a subcategory called continuous sound. And it just
15:11
Speaker 1: so happens that most industrial processes are continuous in nature, right,
15:17
Speaker 1: whereas a train going by your house, or a plane
15:20
Speaker 1: flying or a car going by or a siren is intermittent. Yeah.
15:23
Speaker 1: And then also you could probably say, like if you
15:26
Speaker 1: held the trigger down on a backpack leafblower, um, which
15:30
Speaker 1: again is the worst thing that anyone's ever invented, but
15:34
Speaker 1: if you held it down, that would be a continuous
15:36
Speaker 1: sound for the whole time it was going. But no
15:39
Speaker 1: one does that ever. They just rev in this rhythmic
15:44
Speaker 1: pattern that your brain is just just giving. It's all
15:48
Speaker 1: to trying to try to find a pattern in. And
15:51
Speaker 1: so you get worn out and irritated so quickly because
15:54
Speaker 1: of those things, because they don't follow rhyme or reason.
15:56
Speaker 1: And in conjunction with that, it's an intermittent sound, so,
16:01
Speaker 1: which is, from what I can tell, one of the
16:02
Speaker 1: worst sounds for us. Right. And then you've also got
16:05
Speaker 1: community noise, which is just people noise. I think the
16:09
Speaker 1: leafblowers are thrown into that lawnmowers. Uh. You know, if
16:14
Speaker 1: you've got a festival in your neighborhood, or fireworks on
16:18
Speaker 1: the Fourth of July, or people playing their music in
16:20
Speaker 1: their cards and their houses. This is all just sort
16:23
Speaker 1: of people generated, generated community sound. So those are basically
16:28
Speaker 1: the three categories that I saw, industrial trafficking community. Should
16:32
Speaker 1: we take a break? I think we should. All right,
16:34
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. I'm gonna go quiet down that
16:37
Speaker 1: racket outside. I'll be right back. Okay, do you finish
17:04
Speaker 1: shaking your fist at those teenagers on your lawn. I'm
17:07
Speaker 1: lucky because we don't have loud We don't have one
17:10
Speaker 1: neighbor on one side, and our neighbor beside us is
17:13
Speaker 1: pretty quiet. But I do live near and I've talked
17:15
Speaker 1: about it before, a pretty main road, and you you
17:19
Speaker 1: kind of get used to it. But I also yearn
17:21
Speaker 1: you know, to be a few blocks in. But you know,
17:24
Speaker 1: you can't pick up your house and move it. So
17:26
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? You get used to it?
17:28
Speaker 1: You can, but it's really expensive. Well, no, that is true.
17:31
Speaker 1: You can move a house sometimes. Didn't we do an
17:33
Speaker 1: episode on that once? How to Move a House? Yeah?
17:36
Speaker 1: I think I don't know if we did one just
17:38
Speaker 1: on that. It may been like historic districts or something.
17:41
Speaker 1: I don't know. And by the way, that episode we
17:43
Speaker 1: couldn't think of the other day was crumple zones. Oh boys,
17:47
Speaker 1: So we did do a whole episode on crumple zones.
17:49
Speaker 1: We did. Boy, we were scraping the bottom of the
17:52
Speaker 1: barrel there. But I remember that being an interesting episode though.
17:56
Speaker 1: It was totally interesting. Well that's the stuff you should know, way,
17:59
Speaker 1: isn't it, Chuck? Uh? It is? Indeed, should we talk
18:02
Speaker 1: about hearing damage? Yeah, So, like I was saying, there's
18:06
Speaker 1: that the kind of new type of hearing damage that
18:08
Speaker 1: we're wrapping our minds around. That is like the death
18:11
Speaker 1: of the neurons that are supposed to transmit the electrical
18:14
Speaker 1: impulse to the brain, and so we don't hear very well.
18:18
Speaker 1: Our our communication is garbled, and yet you can pass
18:21
Speaker 1: a traditional hearing tests no problem. Um. But other research
18:27
Speaker 1: is really starting to unfold, like less um less predictable
18:32
Speaker 1: ways that that noise and noise pollution actually affects our health.
18:36
Speaker 1: And it's like our entire system is negatively affected by
18:40
Speaker 1: noise and noise exposure. It is, and it it basically
18:44
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the whole process is triggering the
18:48
Speaker 1: same exact thing that triggers your fight or flight response. Uh,
18:52
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna have the same reaction to you know,
18:55
Speaker 1: if you hear uh a siren go by, the same
18:58
Speaker 1: thing is happening in your as far as your brain knows.
19:01
Speaker 1: Then what happens if like a bear walks up to
19:05
Speaker 1: you and roarers. Yeah, So, like our our hearing is
19:09
Speaker 1: always on and it's always on the lookout for, um,
19:13
Speaker 1: a potential threat. And one of the ways that a
19:16
Speaker 1: potential threat can give itself away is by making a sound. Right.
19:19
Speaker 1: It was, like I was saying earlier, Like we've been
19:21
Speaker 1: around waterfalls and the sound of waves in our evolutionary
19:24
Speaker 1: history for so long that basically it seems like when
19:27
Speaker 1: you're born, you come equipped with this. Don't worry about
19:31
Speaker 1: that sound. Actually you can be soothed by it. It's
19:33
Speaker 1: not something that should stimulate your fight or flight response.
19:37
Speaker 1: But we've lived around industrial machinery and the sound of
19:41
Speaker 1: a text message or a leaf blower, the stupid leaf
19:45
Speaker 1: blowers for such a little amount of our evolutionary history
19:49
Speaker 1: that our minds are not at all attuned to those
19:52
Speaker 1: things or um, we haven't kind of adopted this idea
19:56
Speaker 1: that a leafblower is non threatening and so it stimulates
19:59
Speaker 1: the fight flight response and is when we hear it.
20:02
Speaker 1: That's right, So you're gonna hear that sound, you're amygdala,
20:06
Speaker 1: which we've talked about plenty uh contributes to emotional processing,
20:11
Speaker 1: is going to send that same distress signal to the hypothalamus. Again,
20:15
Speaker 1: that gets if you are in a fight or flight response,
20:18
Speaker 1: which is why you probably want to run screaming if
20:20
Speaker 1: you here too many sirens, you're here too many leaf blowers,
20:24
Speaker 1: and then that's gonna signal your adrenal glands to get
20:28
Speaker 1: your adrenaline going. And I believe cortisol gets going as well.
20:33
Speaker 1: It's like literally mimicking fight or flight. Yeah, And so
20:36
Speaker 1: they figured out that like people who are continuously chronically
20:40
Speaker 1: exposed to sound, like say people who live like really
20:42
Speaker 1: close to an airport, really close to the subway tracks,
20:46
Speaker 1: or um, people who work in a really noisy factory,
20:51
Speaker 1: they have all sorts of crazy random health problems, like
20:55
Speaker 1: their kids sometimes have low birth weight. Obviously, they can
20:59
Speaker 1: develop tonitus um heart disease, obesity, diabetes, UH. There, their
21:05
Speaker 1: children who are exposed to to chronic noise can have
21:08
Speaker 1: UM cognitive impairments, um, high blood pressure, like all sorts
21:12
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. And so you think, well, okay, that's
21:16
Speaker 1: that's like, that's terrible anybody who has to live near
21:19
Speaker 1: noise or work near noise, like we should do something
21:21
Speaker 1: about that. But it's even worse than that, Like, noise
21:24
Speaker 1: pollution is even more insidious than that, because you don't
21:27
Speaker 1: have to be chronically exposed to it. You don't have
21:30
Speaker 1: to live in a place where you're like, this is
21:32
Speaker 1: an objectively noisy place that I live or work in
21:35
Speaker 1: to still suffer from the effects of noise pollution. Yeah,
21:40
Speaker 1: I mean it can affect you when you're sleep because,
21:43
Speaker 1: like you said, your ears are always on. It's not
21:44
Speaker 1: like you go to sleep and the ears say, well,
21:46
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a nice break. That would be a
21:49
Speaker 1: fantastic evolutionary addaptation. Actually, well, actually it would these days.
21:55
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be the mountains, the mountain lions, saber tooth
21:58
Speaker 1: tiger days. Yeah. Nice. If there was a switch and
22:01
Speaker 1: you could kind of control that, it would be so nice.
22:03
Speaker 1: I think the switches, the white noise wave machine is
22:06
Speaker 1: that switch, Yeah, which I've gotten addicted to such that
22:11
Speaker 1: I have to travel with him now. Yeah, everywhere I
22:14
Speaker 1: go I've heard that. Yeah. Basically, once you start, you
22:16
Speaker 1: can't go back. Yeah, I like it, though, I do.
22:18
Speaker 1: Brown noise is my drug of choice. It sounds so
22:21
Speaker 1: gross though brown. Yeah. I make a brown noise every morning,
22:27
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Wow, I was not expecting
22:31
Speaker 1: danger Field to make an appearance. Well that's what you meant, right,
22:34
Speaker 1: poop or no? Yeah, I mean I guess anytime I
22:37
Speaker 1: hear brown, I think it's poop. You know, you think
22:41
Speaker 1: of that or you think of ween the band, did
22:43
Speaker 1: they have a brown song or album? They talk about
22:46
Speaker 1: the brown thing, the brown sound, and brown is just
22:50
Speaker 1: sort of their color and how they used to talk
22:51
Speaker 1: about sound. And I've heard other groups talk about brown sounds.
22:54
Speaker 1: So what does brown sound sound like? Well, brown noise,
22:57
Speaker 1: you know if white noises, brown noises o middle. Yeah,
23:06
Speaker 1: it's sort of a lower lower end. And if you
23:08
Speaker 1: actually play it through a speaker, like if you put
23:10
Speaker 1: it on your phone and play it through a little bluetooth,
23:12
Speaker 1: you can get some good base and it just it
23:14
Speaker 1: really works. Wonders for me. I should try brown noise
23:17
Speaker 1: or even white noise. I've been using um chrome noise
23:21
Speaker 1: where it's like, kid, do do do do do, And
23:24
Speaker 1: it's really not helping me sleep at all. You're like,
23:28
Speaker 1: you're like, I have the sound of a early Internet
23:31
Speaker 1: connection being made a constant um. Did they ever name that?
23:38
Speaker 1: They should have named that great? Yeah, I don't know.
23:41
Speaker 1: I just call it whatever it was. They called it
23:43
Speaker 1: the ticket wichet um. Interrupted sleep, though, that's that's the
23:50
Speaker 1: big problem, or one of the big problems, because your
23:52
Speaker 1: ears are always on. If you have uninterrupted sleep or
23:56
Speaker 1: poor sleep overall, you're gonna be tired. Obviously, your creativity,
24:00
Speaker 1: memory can get impaired. Your creativity is going to be low.
24:03
Speaker 1: You're gonna have impaired judgment, your psychomotor skills might be impacted.
24:08
Speaker 1: You might have more headaches. They've done studies. If you
24:11
Speaker 1: live near airports and stuff like that, or uh, you know,
24:14
Speaker 1: next to like a rail yard, you're gonna have more headaches.
24:16
Speaker 1: You might take more sleeping pills as a result. Um,
24:20
Speaker 1: you might be more prone to minor accidents, and you
24:23
Speaker 1: are going to be more prone to seek uh psychiatric
24:26
Speaker 1: treatment in your life. They like studies have shown this. Yeah,
24:29
Speaker 1: there's a study of people living near European airports. They
24:34
Speaker 1: found a tendestible increase in aircraft noise was associated with
24:38
Speaker 1: a twenty eight percent increase in anxiety medication, and that
24:42
Speaker 1: people um were also likelier to have more likely to
24:46
Speaker 1: have symptoms of depression. So again all this is just
24:50
Speaker 1: from like having not good sleep, which is bad enough,
24:54
Speaker 1: but apparently Chuck it even gets worse because even if
24:57
Speaker 1: your sleep isn't disturbed where you're waking up and not
25:00
Speaker 1: getting sleep because of noise, like you get used to it,
25:05
Speaker 1: the noise is still affecting you while you're sleeping because again,
25:09
Speaker 1: your ear never turns off. It's always on the listen
25:12
Speaker 1: out for some sort of threat creeping up on you.
25:15
Speaker 1: And so if you're exposed to noise while you're sleeping,
25:18
Speaker 1: it's still has that stress effect on you. And what
25:22
Speaker 1: they've figured out is that one of the problems of
25:25
Speaker 1: just being chronically stressed through something like noise and I
25:28
Speaker 1: think stress in general, is that UM it affects I
25:32
Speaker 1: think it's called the end athelium, which is the lining
25:35
Speaker 1: of your blood vessels, and they respond to chemicals that
25:39
Speaker 1: tell them to constrict to relax UM, and they get
25:43
Speaker 1: constricted when they get stressed, when they're exposed to stress
25:47
Speaker 1: like cortisol or something like that comes along and says constrict.
25:50
Speaker 1: And when they do that, you get high blood pressure.
25:53
Speaker 1: You can end up with heart disease, you can end
25:55
Speaker 1: up suffering from heart attacks. And what's insane is they
25:58
Speaker 1: figured out that after one night of being exposed while
26:03
Speaker 1: you're sleeping to something like train sounds um your endothelium
26:10
Speaker 1: it starts suffering, like it doesn't function as well after
26:14
Speaker 1: just one night of that. Right, Like, isn't the idea
26:18
Speaker 1: that you can have no other sort of poor health
26:21
Speaker 1: markers and it can actually be brought on because of
26:24
Speaker 1: this noise. Right, Yes, while you're sleeping, you're still getting sleep,
26:27
Speaker 1: but it's still happening to you while you're sleeping. And
26:29
Speaker 1: not only like high blood pressure um or um like
26:34
Speaker 1: a heart attack or something like that coming down the road,
26:36
Speaker 1: but also like diabetes, obesity. There's a lot of things
26:40
Speaker 1: that we're figuring out are are tied to the lining
26:44
Speaker 1: of the blood vessels and whether they're healthy or not.
26:47
Speaker 1: It's a huge predictor of a whole range of diseases.
26:50
Speaker 1: And when you hear noise, that's your stressors trigger your
26:56
Speaker 1: endothelium to constrict, and that is a really bad thing.
27:00
Speaker 1: It is um here in the United States. We kind
27:03
Speaker 1: of started studying the stuff in earnest in the seventies.
27:08
Speaker 1: That was when uh pollution was a big deal just
27:11
Speaker 1: all around in the United States, and we started to
27:14
Speaker 1: say things like, hey, maybe you shouldn't just um have
27:16
Speaker 1: a family picnic and then just uh pick up your
27:20
Speaker 1: blanket and dump all the trash on the ground like
27:22
Speaker 1: they did on that episode of Madmen and on Anchorman
27:25
Speaker 1: where they're all eating McDonald's And I saw a guy
27:30
Speaker 1: throw a fully like McDonald's thing out the window day
27:35
Speaker 1: the day and smashed on the sidewalk. Oh my god,
27:37
Speaker 1: And I was just like, who who does that? Still, Yeah,
27:40
Speaker 1: that's the problem is is we're at a place in
27:44
Speaker 1: in our country's history where if you confront people like that,
27:47
Speaker 1: there's a chance you're gonna get shot for confronting someone
27:50
Speaker 1: like that. But I don't confront But that's like, that
27:53
Speaker 1: isn't the kind of behavior you should under normal circumstances,
27:56
Speaker 1: non shooting circumstances, feel perfectly fine confronting somebody about like
28:00
Speaker 1: what what is wrong with you? Like we're so far
28:02
Speaker 1: beyond that, Like everyone knows you shouldn't do that. It's
28:06
Speaker 1: just insane. I got into a good fight with him
28:10
Speaker 1: in my brain. Yes, I know, Like what, like, where's
28:13
Speaker 1: the solution, where's the answer? I don't know, man. I
28:17
Speaker 1: think the zen path is you go pick up that
28:18
Speaker 1: McDonald's cup and throw it away and and say a
28:22
Speaker 1: prayer for that person good luck. Uh So. Yeah. New
28:26
Speaker 1: York uh is where they started studying this stuff in
28:30
Speaker 1: the seventies because it was kind of wrapped up, like
28:32
Speaker 1: I said, folded into larger pollution studies. They're like, well,
28:35
Speaker 1: we might as well talk about noise pollution. New York
28:38
Speaker 1: is a place to do it, and they did. There
28:40
Speaker 1: were a couple of studies in the nineteen seventies about
28:42
Speaker 1: subway noise that really sort of gave put the whole
28:47
Speaker 1: thing on some terra firma as far as the health
28:50
Speaker 1: effects and and and learning effects. In the case of
28:53
Speaker 1: kids at PS ninety eight in Manhattan, it was very
28:56
Speaker 1: close to the train tracks there, the subway train track close. Yeah,
29:01
Speaker 1: like two twenty feet away. And they found and this
29:05
Speaker 1: is this is pretty startling. They found that the kids
29:07
Speaker 1: that were closest to the train tracks were eleven months
29:12
Speaker 1: behind their classmates. That were on the other side of
29:14
Speaker 1: the school. Yeah, on like not in another school, just
29:17
Speaker 1: on the other side of the school. Yeah, almost a
29:20
Speaker 1: full well, I mean that is basically a full school year,
29:25
Speaker 1: because you know with summer's often stuff, that's an academic
29:28
Speaker 1: year plus that they were behind. And they installed acoustic
29:32
Speaker 1: tiles in the classroom and some dampening devices, and they
29:37
Speaker 1: did a follow up study and the gap had closed basically,
29:41
Speaker 1: So I mean there's proof right there, like your kids
29:43
Speaker 1: are not learning as well if they're near that subway noise.
29:46
Speaker 1: There's another kind of landmark study in the seventies in
29:49
Speaker 1: New York that established the concept of noise pollution at
29:53
Speaker 1: a place called the Bridges Apartment high rise or a
29:56
Speaker 1: cluster of them in Manhattan that I believe I've maybe
30:00
Speaker 1: drives under or really really close, um. And the traffic
30:08
Speaker 1: noise is so bad that even as high up as
30:10
Speaker 1: the eighth floor, the traffic sound is about the level
30:14
Speaker 1: of a vacuum cleaner. And like just sitting in your
30:17
Speaker 1: apartment you have to raise your voice to be heard, um,
30:21
Speaker 1: which I mean, just the stress of that I can't imagine,
30:26
Speaker 1: Like that's an inhabitable, uninhabitable place. I believe people are
30:30
Speaker 1: still living there as well. UM. But the the this
30:34
Speaker 1: this study found that children living there were far behind
30:38
Speaker 1: it reading comprehension at listening comprehension uh, and just weren't
30:42
Speaker 1: learning as as quickly as other kids their age who
30:46
Speaker 1: did not live in the bridges. So those two studies
30:49
Speaker 1: together from New York kind of established this idea like, Okay,
30:53
Speaker 1: there's a there's a real problem with noise pollution UM.
30:57
Speaker 1: And then it just went away for many, many years,
31:00
Speaker 1: is until about two thousand eleven when the WHO. There's
31:04
Speaker 1: a bunch of other studies, a lot of the other
31:06
Speaker 1: ones that we've restaurant so far came out around two
31:08
Speaker 1: thousand ten, two thousand eleven two. I'm not sure what
31:11
Speaker 1: exactly kicked it off, but there was a big spade
31:13
Speaker 1: of them. But then the WHO released a really big report,
31:16
Speaker 1: not the WHO, the band, the World Health Organization. They're
31:19
Speaker 1: another loud band actually, and UM, yeah, they felt terribly
31:23
Speaker 1: guilty about causing hearing loss in their their fans, so
31:26
Speaker 1: they launched the study of UM uh basically all of
31:31
Speaker 1: Western Europe. UM. They looked at UM I think something
31:36
Speaker 1: like five hundred different studies and did a meta analysis
31:39
Speaker 1: of them to calculate what's called the disability adjusted life
31:43
Speaker 1: years or dailies that were lost in Europe every year
31:46
Speaker 1: two noise pollution. Yeah, And the idea of a daily
31:51
Speaker 1: is they can't. They basically say, it's like the healthy
31:54
Speaker 1: years of your life that are end up being lost
31:59
Speaker 1: to this human made noise that you're living with. And
32:04
Speaker 1: it's kind of a sort of an esoteric way to
32:06
Speaker 1: think about it, but once you wrap your head around
32:09
Speaker 1: it, it it makes a little bit more sense. But they
32:11
Speaker 1: found that at least one million healthy years of life
32:15
Speaker 1: are lost every single year only just in Europe due
32:20
Speaker 1: to noise pollution. A million healthy years of people's lives annually. Yeah,
32:25
Speaker 1: And that that means because of all of the disease
32:28
Speaker 1: burden that noise pollution produces in humans, that that's how
32:32
Speaker 1: much of our our healthy lifespan is shaved off every
32:36
Speaker 1: year collectively, or how much Europe's is. And they did
32:39
Speaker 1: a follow up study in two thousand and eighteen, Chuck,
32:42
Speaker 1: and found that actually, no, we got it wrong. It's
32:45
Speaker 1: one point eight million dailies are lost in Western Europe
32:49
Speaker 1: alone each year. So they definitely established through these this
32:53
Speaker 1: these couple of who studies like, no, noise pollution is
32:57
Speaker 1: still a thing and we should probably do something about
33:00
Speaker 1: on it. And there was another study that was released
33:02
Speaker 1: this past year that said, yes, dailies are significant, but
33:07
Speaker 1: we may have found a link that shows that noise
33:09
Speaker 1: pollution can actually straight up kill you under some circumstances potentially. Yeah,
33:16
Speaker 1: And this one was this is pretty startling because they
33:19
Speaker 1: looked at herd Uh, well, not necessarily heart attack, but
33:22
Speaker 1: nighttime deaths. No, I guess it was heart attacks. But
33:25
Speaker 1: if you die overnight, die in your sleep quote unquote
33:29
Speaker 1: from heart attacks. Uh, and the link to commercial aircraft
33:34
Speaker 1: flying over your house, and I guess they had a
33:37
Speaker 1: way to sort of cancel out all the other factors.
33:40
Speaker 1: And they got down to the nitty gritty that three
33:44
Speaker 1: of all nighttime deaths from heart attacks can be attributed
33:47
Speaker 1: to the sound of aircraft flying overhead while you're sleeping.
33:51
Speaker 1: That's just like that was it. That was the last
33:54
Speaker 1: stress response that your body could handle, and you had
33:57
Speaker 1: a heart attack and died from that sound. They said, like, Okay,
34:00
Speaker 1: we found a definite correlation, but if there is causation here,
34:04
Speaker 1: then we can chalk up about three percent of those
34:07
Speaker 1: that's astounding. It is astounding. We're gonna take a break.
34:11
Speaker 1: That's the human grossness, and we'll talk about the awful
34:15
Speaker 1: things that we're doing to our animal friends in nature
34:18
Speaker 1: right after this, all right, Uh, we talked about a
34:45
Speaker 1: lot of studies that basically all added up to noise
34:49
Speaker 1: pollution very bad for human beings, like literally bad for
34:53
Speaker 1: their health. And and I know we've talked about a
34:57
Speaker 1: few of these before over the years, especially when it
34:59
Speaker 1: comes to whale. Uh, but all manner of mother nature
35:04
Speaker 1: are impacted by this noise. They did a study in
35:07
Speaker 1: the early two thousands about stress hormones um for what
35:12
Speaker 1: kind of whales were they right whales? The right whales
35:14
Speaker 1: in the Bay of Fundy, And they saw and this
35:17
Speaker 1: was remarkable. They saw a really weird, unexplained declined in
35:21
Speaker 1: the stress hormone concentrations that went away and then came
35:25
Speaker 1: back up again. And they eventually realized it was a
35:29
Speaker 1: halt in the shipping in the bay after eleven happened. Yeah,
35:34
Speaker 1: because shipping is probably humans noisiest marine endeavor that we
35:40
Speaker 1: do all the time constantly. And the idea of a
35:44
Speaker 1: break and that having being connected to a huge decline
35:48
Speaker 1: in stress hormones in whale poop. That's that's significant. But
35:51
Speaker 1: it was an accidental discovery, and I think it led
35:54
Speaker 1: other people to start studying stuff like that, like the
35:56
Speaker 1: effects of noise on wildlife. And there was US I
36:00
Speaker 1: think University of Idaho. I'm sorry. If it's Idaho State,
36:04
Speaker 1: please don't be mad. I think it's okay. UM a
36:07
Speaker 1: study from two thousand twelve where researchers set up like
36:11
Speaker 1: what they call the Phantom Road, which is basically they
36:14
Speaker 1: have fixed a line of loudspeakers to some trees out
36:17
Speaker 1: in the wilderness that stretched about a half a mile
36:20
Speaker 1: in length, and um, they just played road and traffic
36:25
Speaker 1: noise and not like city stuff, just like the kind
36:27
Speaker 1: of stuff that possibly a remote road through the wilderness
36:31
Speaker 1: would sound like. Because they recorded it in Glacier National
36:34
Speaker 1: Park on a road there, and just from that, just
36:38
Speaker 1: from like this rural Glacier National Park road noise, something
36:42
Speaker 1: like more than a quarter of all the birds in
36:44
Speaker 1: the area just left. They were like, we're moving, We're
36:48
Speaker 1: going to Canada. So everybody in the United States, Yeah,
36:53
Speaker 1: you know, I think I definitely noticed, and I heard
36:56
Speaker 1: other people talk about UM in like April of last
37:01
Speaker 1: year when things really slowed down commuter and traffic wise
37:05
Speaker 1: due to the pandemic. And I don't think it was
37:08
Speaker 1: just um our our imaginations, but there were there was
37:12
Speaker 1: a lot more bird activity going on. Uh. And I
37:15
Speaker 1: remember I think I remember us even talking about it.
37:19
Speaker 1: Um or maybe it was just quieter for us, so
37:22
Speaker 1: we noticed the more or maybe a combination of both,
37:24
Speaker 1: but there was there was a difference. And when you know,
37:27
Speaker 1: when shipping stops after nine eleven or when um traffic stops,
37:32
Speaker 1: nature says, oh uh, the the human a holes are gone.
37:38
Speaker 1: Now we can start behaving normally again. Yeah, like things
37:41
Speaker 1: are back to normal. Um. And that's I mean, that's
37:44
Speaker 1: just on land. Also, they found that Idaho study found
37:47
Speaker 1: that the birds that stuck around lost a bunch of
37:49
Speaker 1: weight which they would have needed to migrate, so maybe
37:52
Speaker 1: they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. But those
37:55
Speaker 1: that was the land study. There's been other studies on land.
37:57
Speaker 1: But it seems like the the we're doing a lot
38:01
Speaker 1: of damage to marine ecosystems as well, like probably even
38:04
Speaker 1: more because sound waves travel and water a lot better
38:07
Speaker 1: than light, which means that most of the animals that
38:10
Speaker 1: live in the water have really sensitive hearing. That's what
38:13
Speaker 1: they've evolved to use to communicate and listen out for, right,
38:16
Speaker 1: So when we make noise, it's really problematic and marine ecosystems, Yeah,
38:22
Speaker 1: and we make a lot of noise. I mean that
38:23
Speaker 1: shipping activity we talked about is super disruptive to anything underwater.
38:30
Speaker 1: When they search for mineral deposits on the sea floor
38:33
Speaker 1: or under the sea floor, they use these seismic air
38:35
Speaker 1: guns that are you can hear those things like a
38:38
Speaker 1: fish can hear that a thousand, thousands of miles away.
38:42
Speaker 1: Very disruptive. Um, sonar and no We talked about sonar
38:46
Speaker 1: in in an episode years ago and how that affected
38:50
Speaker 1: marine life. I can't remember what it was. Did we
38:52
Speaker 1: do an entire episode on the time they blew up
38:54
Speaker 1: the beach to whale? Like what to do with the
38:56
Speaker 1: beach whale? Maybe? I think, but they basically kind of
39:00
Speaker 1: say now, like they think the reasons Wales beach themselves
39:04
Speaker 1: is because of these noises and sonar as a big culprit, right, Um,
39:08
Speaker 1: like it just drives him out of the water, which
39:10
Speaker 1: sounds bonkers, But if you ever think about how humans
39:13
Speaker 1: sometimes jump from tall buildings rather than being burned by
39:18
Speaker 1: the intensity of a fire. I think it's virtually the
39:20
Speaker 1: same principle. Sure, so we are we have become aware
39:24
Speaker 1: of just how much noise pollution affects, not just us,
39:29
Speaker 1: but the environment as well. Like it's it is a
39:31
Speaker 1: form of pollution. Um. And it seems like you know,
39:34
Speaker 1: it started to accumulate in the last few years, but
39:36
Speaker 1: really we've known for a good fifty years that noise
39:40
Speaker 1: pollution is really bad for everybody. Uh, and yet we've
39:44
Speaker 1: done almost nothing about it. But we had the start, Chuck,
39:48
Speaker 1: We started out like we were going to like almost
39:50
Speaker 1: immediately when we realized how bad noise pollution was in
39:54
Speaker 1: the seventies, we started to do something about it um
39:58
Speaker 1: and the federal government passed like th and actually I
40:00
Speaker 1: saw a fourth one um huge acts that had to
40:04
Speaker 1: do with basically controlling noise pollution. Yeah, either controlling noise
40:08
Speaker 1: pollution for people in general, or through OSHA, making sure
40:12
Speaker 1: people were working in safe conditions or at least had
40:15
Speaker 1: you know, the ear cans and things they needed to
40:17
Speaker 1: work safely. And it was, like you said, it was
40:19
Speaker 1: headed in the right direction. We knew it was bad
40:22
Speaker 1: and we were trying to stop it. And then the
40:24
Speaker 1: Reagan administration came along and said, nuts to that, that's
40:28
Speaker 1: federal regulation. Let's just leave it to the states, because
40:32
Speaker 1: you ask any governor of any state and they'll tell
40:34
Speaker 1: you their citizens know to do the right thing, and
40:36
Speaker 1: they'll do that right thing. And uh so we'll just
40:40
Speaker 1: leave it up to the states and let them. Uh
40:42
Speaker 1: they volunteered to face itself out. The Office of Noise
40:45
Speaker 1: and Abatement Control, uh on paper still exists, but Congress said,
40:50
Speaker 1: you know, let's just not fund them anymore and let's
40:52
Speaker 1: keep these laws on the books, but really not worry
40:54
Speaker 1: about it too much because the states will take care
40:56
Speaker 1: of it, right, because states always do the right thing. Yeah,
40:58
Speaker 1: And the states, of course, did absolutely nothing, and it's
41:01
Speaker 1: partially because they can't do a lot about it. A
41:04
Speaker 1: lot of noise is really best understood, studied, and regulated
41:09
Speaker 1: by the federal government. Like what like Georgia has a
41:13
Speaker 1: bunch of money reserve to study the effects of noise
41:16
Speaker 1: on humans. Like, no, that's totally a federal kind of
41:19
Speaker 1: thing to do, you know. And that's what some of
41:21
Speaker 1: those seventies acts set up, like that, that Office of
41:24
Speaker 1: Noise Abatement and Control or noise control in abatement, like
41:27
Speaker 1: it's purpose was to study that kind of stuff. That's
41:30
Speaker 1: not what states do. So the states have, well not
41:33
Speaker 1: the states, but usually more municipalities and counties have. They
41:36
Speaker 1: have taken steps to kind of mitigate sound pollution. Like
41:40
Speaker 1: there's your noise pollution. There's usually regulations on how early
41:45
Speaker 1: or late a landscaping crew can work within the city limits,
41:49
Speaker 1: or some of them say like you can't boom your
41:52
Speaker 1: stereo or you're not allowed to have that broken glass
41:55
Speaker 1: muffler on your Harley. Um, like, there's some stuff like that.
41:58
Speaker 1: But then like if you live kind of under a
42:01
Speaker 1: flight path, if your town wanted to say, you know what,
42:04
Speaker 1: you can't fly over our town and wake everybody up
42:07
Speaker 1: between you know, twelve at night and seven in the morning,
42:11
Speaker 1: you can't fly an airplane over it. The airplanes would
42:14
Speaker 1: just be like like, I didn't hear you. Sorry, I
42:17
Speaker 1: was listening to the Feds who say you can't make
42:19
Speaker 1: laws like that. Yeah, And you know, I get the feeling.
42:22
Speaker 1: With municipalities. It is more like complaints from neighbors kind
42:27
Speaker 1: of noise or the lawn cruise in construction like you
42:30
Speaker 1: were saying, and less like stuff with big teeth um recently,
42:35
Speaker 1: Uh weird reason I won't get into, but I was
42:37
Speaker 1: looking up noise ordinances and Athens, Georgia, and they're kind
42:41
Speaker 1: of funny when you look at these noise ordinances. It's
42:44
Speaker 1: like it literally said, like you know, walking down the
42:48
Speaker 1: sidewalk um yelling at one another, talking about basically drunk kids,
42:52
Speaker 1: you know, like the French quarter kind of thing. Uh.
42:55
Speaker 1: It said, you know, this includes hooting and hollering, and
42:58
Speaker 1: it was something about being able to hear you from
43:01
Speaker 1: like three feet away, but or noise from your apartment.
43:05
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it's like good luck with that.
43:07
Speaker 1: Like you can call the cops on someone maybe, but
43:10
Speaker 1: there's no teeth or or or what do you call
43:15
Speaker 1: it when you or enforcement kind of with a lot
43:18
Speaker 1: of this stuff, aside from singling out people when it
43:21
Speaker 1: happens in the moment, and you may get a cop
43:23
Speaker 1: come by and say turn it down. But even if
43:25
Speaker 1: there's a will to do something, it depends on if
43:28
Speaker 1: it's like rail traffic or air traffic, like the federal um,
43:32
Speaker 1: the federal government ties local local towns and counties hands
43:36
Speaker 1: like they can't do anything about it, and there's um
43:39
Speaker 1: as a result, there's a lot of noise pollution that
43:41
Speaker 1: people can't do anything about. There's a um. There's a
43:44
Speaker 1: town in Canada. I can't remember the name of it,
43:47
Speaker 1: but it is um. It's got really like a rail
43:50
Speaker 1: system that goes through it, and it doesn't have like
43:53
Speaker 1: alarms or like the arms that come down. So trains
43:57
Speaker 1: have to hank their horns at least three times as
44:00
Speaker 1: they crossed through this town. And there's a bunch of
44:02
Speaker 1: different crossings, and they calculated that train horns blair twelve
44:09
Speaker 1: hundred times a day in this little tiny town. And like,
44:13
Speaker 1: obviously everybody's going nuts, but they can't do anything about
44:16
Speaker 1: it because the federal government of Canada is in charge
44:20
Speaker 1: of regulating rail travel like every other developed or industrialized country. Yeah,
44:25
Speaker 1: and even if it's something like Osha and like you,
44:27
Speaker 1: you work in allowed factory and they're trying to regulate that,
44:31
Speaker 1: they say that a they don't cover all industries they
44:34
Speaker 1: should cover, and when when they do, it's very inconsistently applied.
44:39
Speaker 1: And even when they do apply it inconsistently. Um, they
44:43
Speaker 1: say that these limits aren't even low enough to protect
44:46
Speaker 1: all the workers anyway from hearing loss said, OSHA regulations
44:50
Speaker 1: allow workers to be exposed to ninety five decibels for
44:55
Speaker 1: four hours a day, five days a week, for your
44:57
Speaker 1: entire forty year career, and that that that's like you're
45:01
Speaker 1: going to suffer from hearing loss if that's the case. Yeah,
45:04
Speaker 1: that's like holding a leafblower right right next to you
45:07
Speaker 1: for four hours a day, five days a week for
45:09
Speaker 1: forty years. Like of course you're going to lose you're hearing. Like,
45:12
Speaker 1: that's that's crazy. Well, and then fact you're in the
45:15
Speaker 1: other health effects that no one ever talks about that
45:17
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the whole first half of this thing.
45:20
Speaker 1: And you have an unhealthy population if you're stuck in
45:22
Speaker 1: one of those places. So we can sit here and
45:25
Speaker 1: corvetch all day, which we we would love to do.
45:28
Speaker 1: But there are solutions to this, but we I want
45:30
Speaker 1: to point out one more time, all these solutions are
45:33
Speaker 1: zero thanks to the Reagan administration. Um. Instead, there's some
45:38
Speaker 1: simple stuff you can do to help us humans, Like
45:40
Speaker 1: you can change aircraft routes, you can build barriers along
45:44
Speaker 1: roadways and railways. UM. You can even green it up,
45:47
Speaker 1: like they found that if you use shrubbery and trees
45:50
Speaker 1: mixed together so that they basically produce a fence, and
45:53
Speaker 1: you plant them close to the road or close to
45:56
Speaker 1: the railway rather than close to the place that you're
45:58
Speaker 1: trying to protect. They do pretty good at reducing the
46:02
Speaker 1: decibels of the sound the noise pollution coming from the traffic. Um,
46:07
Speaker 1: that's some easy stuff you can do. And then on
46:09
Speaker 1: the user end, on the individuals, and there's all sorts
46:12
Speaker 1: of like acoustic insulation and paneling you can add to
46:16
Speaker 1: your house to make it a little more soundproof and quieter. Um,
46:20
Speaker 1: what about those mufflers chuck car mufflers. Yeah, so apparently
46:25
Speaker 1: the ones that make the sound or not not they're
46:28
Speaker 1: not good. Yeah, I mean that they could they could
46:33
Speaker 1: change that. The e p A could get involved and say,
46:35
Speaker 1: you know what, you can't have those kind of mufflers anymore.
46:38
Speaker 1: Thank god if they did. As far as the shipping go,
46:42
Speaker 1: and know, it's always like a Honda Civic or something
46:44
Speaker 1: that it's like tricked out, like it's some kind of
46:46
Speaker 1: race car um. As far as the water goes in
46:49
Speaker 1: the shipping stuff like that. Those big ships, Uh, they
46:52
Speaker 1: found that if they separate the ship's engine from the hull. Uh,
46:57
Speaker 1: they are quieter, much quieter, and they even found that
47:00
Speaker 1: there is uh. I think there's a se reduction in
47:03
Speaker 1: acoustic energy um six to eight decibels, which is significant. Uh.
47:08
Speaker 1: And they also found that it is less fuel efficient.
47:12
Speaker 1: And if they like retrofitted or kind of change the
47:14
Speaker 1: way they built these ships, I don't know if you can, well,
47:16
Speaker 1: I guess you can retrofit something. Well, yeah, the propellers
47:18
Speaker 1: are what's making them less fuel efficient, so you can
47:20
Speaker 1: easy not easily, but you can take off the old
47:22
Speaker 1: propellers and put on new ones. Right, But it costs
47:25
Speaker 1: a lot of money up front, like they will save
47:27
Speaker 1: in the long run. And I think uh is it
47:30
Speaker 1: pronounced Marsk, the big shipping company. They spent a hundred
47:34
Speaker 1: million bucks to do just eleven of its ships, So
47:38
Speaker 1: that gives you the idea of how much it costs. Uh.
47:41
Speaker 1: There may be seen some efficiencies if they did more
47:44
Speaker 1: or something, but it's not cheap. And they have seven
47:47
Speaker 1: forty ships they've done eleven, so well, I did see
47:50
Speaker 1: that is actually a very small fraction of all of
47:53
Speaker 1: the ships involved in shipping that are responsible for the
47:56
Speaker 1: vast majority of the noise. So if you did just
47:59
Speaker 1: focus on the worst offenders that would have a significant impact. Yeah,
48:04
Speaker 1: there's also a huge amount of noise, apparently underwater noise
48:07
Speaker 1: that comes from offshore wind farms because of the pile
48:11
Speaker 1: driver that is moved by up and down by the
48:15
Speaker 1: blades to help produce the electricity to move the turbine right,
48:20
Speaker 1: And they found that if you just put a perforated
48:22
Speaker 1: pipe around the pile driver, the pile driver is going
48:25
Speaker 1: to produce bubbles and those bubbles will dissipate the noise.
48:29
Speaker 1: Almost all the noise I think like of the noise
48:32
Speaker 1: coming from those offshore wind farms. That's a really simple,
48:35
Speaker 1: easy solution. Just do it people. Yeah, and there's one
48:38
Speaker 1: other thing that I hadn't thought about, but I saw
48:40
Speaker 1: a couple of places and it really makes sense, is
48:42
Speaker 1: that the noise pollution we're contributing to marine ecosystems in
48:46
Speaker 1: particular is just such low hanging fruit that there's no
48:52
Speaker 1: reason we shouldn't do this. There's some really easy stuff
48:55
Speaker 1: we can do, like even rerouting shipping lanes is one
48:57
Speaker 1: thing we can do, and that by doing that it
49:00
Speaker 1: will actually stabilize marine ecosystems in marine life so that
49:05
Speaker 1: it will buy us a little time while we're figuring
49:07
Speaker 1: out much trickier stuff like ocean acidification and things that
49:11
Speaker 1: are also threats to it. So it's like, just removing
49:13
Speaker 1: noise pollution would really go a long way toward extending
49:17
Speaker 1: the UM. I guess the health and vitality of the
49:21
Speaker 1: oceans while there, you know, while we're combating climate change.
49:26
Speaker 1: I love it. Let's get all these things going. Our
49:28
Speaker 1: health is suffering. Let's start with the mufflers. Yeah, that's
49:32
Speaker 1: just annoyance. Uh. Well, since Chuck said that's just annoyance,
49:37
Speaker 1: of course, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. Uh.
49:43
Speaker 1: This one's pretty short and sweet. I just love it
49:45
Speaker 1: when we get an answer about something. I think I
49:47
Speaker 1: might have known this at some point, but we talked
49:50
Speaker 1: about shrinking as humans. And this is from uh Steve
49:56
Speaker 1: and Roscoe, Illinois. He says, I've been a long time listener,
49:58
Speaker 1: never had a reason to reach out, but you my
50:00
Speaker 1: Arab expertise. I'm a physical therapist, and while listening to
50:03
Speaker 1: episode about crash testing, you ask why do we shrink
50:06
Speaker 1: when we get older? What happens is we age, guys,
50:09
Speaker 1: is the intervertebral discs in our back lose hydration and
50:13
Speaker 1: as a result, we shrink. Uh. There are six discs
50:16
Speaker 1: in the cervical spine, twelve discs in the thoracic spine,
50:20
Speaker 1: and five discs in the lumbar. If each disc were
50:24
Speaker 1: to lose a minimum of one six of an inch
50:26
Speaker 1: in height, that adds up pretty quickly, and you can
50:29
Speaker 1: easily lose an inch plus in your lifetime. The other
50:32
Speaker 1: thing to consider as we age is our muscles and
50:34
Speaker 1: tissues get tighter, pulls us into positions of poor posture.
50:39
Speaker 1: That's right, and this restricts our ability to stand up straight.
50:43
Speaker 1: You can bind all these things together and all of
50:45
Speaker 1: a sudden, Josh isn't going to hit his goal height
50:47
Speaker 1: of six ft. I have to stay on my tippy toes.
50:50
Speaker 1: New thanks for all the good work. I hope it
50:52
Speaker 1: didn't step on the toes of a future short stuff.
50:54
Speaker 1: I think we just did it. Steve. That's Steve Marima
50:58
Speaker 1: or Marima from Rusco in a way. Thanks a lot, Steve,
51:02
Speaker 1: that was a good email. We appreciate that big time.
51:04
Speaker 1: And if you haven't stumbled upon it yet, you should
51:07
Speaker 1: check out our episode Encarcopania. It is old, but it
51:11
Speaker 1: was interesting. Yeah, if you have any ethysical therapy needs
51:14
Speaker 1: in Illinois. Give Steve a cal sounds good guy, Yeah,
51:17
Speaker 1: head to beautiful Roscoe, Illinois. Come on, if you want
51:22
Speaker 1: to be like Steve from Roscoe and uh give us
51:26
Speaker 1: some more info that we were asking for. We love
51:29
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. You can send it to his
51:31
Speaker 1: via email to stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
51:38
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
51:40
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51:43
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51:46
Speaker 1: favorite shows.