Now Hear This

 Now Hear This

1.

Forgive me for starting with a long quotation from an article titled “Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis?” by David Owen in the 13 May 2019 issue of The New Yorker:

In February, Bruitparif, a nonprofit organization that monitors environmental-noise levels in metropolitan Paris, published a report that combined medical projections from the World Health Organization with “noise maps” based partly on data from its own network of acoustic sensors. It concluded, among many other things, that an average resident of any of the loudest parts of the Île-de-France—which includes Paris and its surrounding suburbs—loses “more than three healthy life-years,” in the course of a lifetime, to some combination of ailments caused or exacerbated by the din of cars, trucks, airplanes, and trains. These health effects, according to guidelines published by the W.H.O.’s European regional office last year, include tinnitus, sleep disturbance, ischemic heart disease, obesity, diabetes, adverse birth outcomes, and cognitive impairment in children. In Western Europe, the guidelines say, traffic noise results in an annual loss of “at least one million healthy years of life.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/is-noise-pollution-the-next-big-public-health-crisis

"The din of cars, trucks, airplanes...."

For once I may have been ahead of the curve on ailments that I would have avoided had I been apprised of their causes beforehand—in other words, had been taught the risks of using a given product before making certain choices as a consumer or citizen.

Like riding a bicycle without ear protection. Everyone worries about the skull; how about the tympanum? 

There are so many examples of this kind of large-scale swindle, this nondisclosure of pertinent facts, often the result of corporate or government malfeasance, that it would be in vain to list them all. The classic example today is the opioid crisis. I have a hunch that of the millions of victims of this monumental money-grab by a coalition of pharmaceutical firms, health professionals (should we put “professionals” in quotes?), and other hidden actors (think bank officers, stock brokers, health administrators asleep at their posts, counselors, and therapists), very few casualties of the epidemic would have swallowed that first “non-addictive” white pill had they known what lay in store for them, their families, and their communities.

The subject of this post is not nearly as dire as opioid addiction. Still, good hearing is not something I take for granted. It's not something I want to jeopardize. The good thing is, I can do something about it.

When I saw Owen’s article, I was already aware that noise (like light) pollution is a part of daily life that we, human beings in general, accept uncritically, one of those “well, we can’t go back”-type aspects of civilized life. No one is giving up a lawnmower, a leafblower, a car, or an electric guitar in order to—well, what? Save his or her hearing.

Nope, we get along just fine with gradual partial deafness (and other more serious ills named in Owen's essay), especially as there’s no rubric of measurement for what we’ve lost compared to what remains. We’re blithely going deaf without knowing it because the root cause for this malady is largely a matter of our own compliance anyway. We’re so accustomed to it, so well adapted, that rationalization, if one bothers to think about it at all, is the easiest thing in the world.

2.

One day about a year ago, it struck me that bike riding was having a deleterious effect on my hearing. I live in fast growing suburbia. The roads on which I ride are busy, loud, and dangerous. It occurred to me that I could do something about the second of those three conditions.

Upon leaving the garage that day, I looked up and noticed my foam earplugs, the ones I use when mowing the lawn or vacuuming the house, on the shelf. I thought, hey, why not.

Because the fact is, cars and trucks and motorcycles are constantly grinding away at my left ear. It's worse at intersections, where I always pull to the front of the lane, prepping myself for release so as to find my lane before all the cars start adjusting in order to get around me. Sometimes the red light is two or even three minutes long. The trucks boom by, trailers clatter, a river of cars creates a metallic whoosh that wears me down. Correct that: a whoosh that used to wear me down.

Because on a whim I grabbed those earplugs and stuck them in....

The great thing about these plugs is that they subtract 30 decibels of ugly noise. Also, they're light and cheap. And washable! 😃

Since then, riding has been a lot more fun, safer too. No longer do I have to take my left hand off the handlebars (in traffic, no less) so as to stick my index finger into my left ear when I hear the really loud trucks coming up fast in either direction. The plugs take care of all that safely. I hear everything, no problem there, but without the harsh sometimes piercing whine of a revved engine or tires whipping across blacktop. Intersections have become rest stops rather than exercises in patience.

3.

I've yet to see another cyclist wearing foam earplugs, and I've never come across a tip like this in a bicycling magazine or book. Fellow suburbanites, as well as city dwellers, give it a try. What do you have to lose? Hopefully you'll be happy with the results.

Roadysseus

18 July 2019