[stonecypher]

How do you define chronic noise pollution in your community? Does your community have any ordinances in place to address the issue, or do residents just consider it a fact of life, a NON-issue?

My "hot buttons" are leaf blowers, endlessly barking dogs, unmufflered muscle cars, and ATVs. (But, hey, I've gotten old and crotchety over the last few years.)

Should there be a basic right to reasonable peace and quiet in today's world? Is such a goal even attainable any more?

Excerpt from 2007 essay that appears even more relevant today:

Even if chronic exposure to noise is unlikely to kill you, it can simmer under the surface and take a toll on your well-being.

Studies have shown that chronic night noise not only leaves you shrouded in a fog of fatigue, irritability and poor concentration, but also activates the stress response as you sleep. And while the number of awakenings per night may decrease as you adjust to the din, the increased heart rate, blood pressure and breathing changes persist.

"The idea that people get used to noise is a myth," the Environmental Protection Agency has reported. "Even when we think we have become accustomed to noise, biological changes still take place inside us."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 30_pf.html

[Forester]

Add to that list oversensitive car alarms--it seems like we're all so accustomed to them going off that they no longer serve their purpose (drawing attention to someone trying to break into your car).

I suppose that there has always been noise for people to put up with, but as the population swells and living conditions become denser, we don't have the same insulation from that noise. I would also argue that excessive use of energy inputs allows us to make louder noise all the time. You can't tear up the street on a bicycle or a horse the way a sports car with a questionably legal muffler or a crotch rocket motorcycle can. If electricity was valued as a luxury, people wouldn't suck it up with overpowered stereos and speakers. And if we all had to break our backs growing food and working as laborers (to replace cheap energy inputs), none of us would have the desire to stay out all night partying until 4 am, and we wouldn't have the free time to spend driving around aimlessly.

I harbor the hesitant hope that market prices can help to edge out unnecessary noise--i.e. leaf blowers once a gallon of gas becomes more expensive than paying a laborer to use a rake--but I think things are going to get much noisier before they get quieter. Revolution and societal collapse are cacophonous things.
My 2 cents from a noisy urban neighborhood.

[vision-master]

Loud home threatre systems?

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('baha', 'N')oise pollution comes in many flavors. I live in the woods, there are very few cars going by or leaf blowers here, but I still have to endure anoying noises...
There is a whipporwill that lives around here that won't shut up in the evening. And I can't leave the windows open at night because at dawn the birds are so loud you might as well forget sleeping. Maybe not as annoying as a car alarm but it still wakes me up.

Not what you expected, huh?

[JJ]

our town ordinance says we can't have a fowl that crows.

my next door neighbors have a varying number of constantly barking dogs. When I complained to them, the husband told me "if you want to remain good neighbors, then you will have to accept the fact that dogs bark'.

I have a hunting dog (lacy) and a cocker/lab mutt. They sleep inside at night. He told me that actually, it was my dogs barking anyway.

One day he came over to my house and said "my wife in an animal lover. I think there is an injured cat in your back yard." Guarantee; no cat can remain alive in my back yard. I walked out back and picked up the dead cat and said "Hey, Bing, dinner".

They think I ate their chihuahua that disappeared about a month ago (I didn't).

My 13 year old said he's going to try them down for biofuel when things get bad....

[alokin]

YES! We can't have a rooster because he's crowing, but all neighbours can use all sorts of noisy garden tools. Everybody here thinks gardening is something noisy.
Then there are different car and motorcycle noises just for fun and it is common to leave the car idling while putting the kids in etc. And our neighbour has always the radio on, he's a nice guy and we don't want to complain... But roosters are too noisy.

It's always the kind of noise. You can tell that birds make noise and find a motorbike noise great.

[MD]

So there's a reason behind the phrase "peace and quiet"?

Go figure.

[Plantagenet]

Floatplanes are about the noisiest thing around here. They've got to pull a lot of rpms to take off from the local pond.

[Chuckmak]

*blasts music in this post*

[jasonraymondson]

Even in the country it is not quiet. Fucking bugs never shut the hell up

[WildRose]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'F')loatplanes are about the noisiest thing around here. They've got to pull a lot of rpms to take off from the local pond.

[WildRose]

I recently took a walk at night around a city "lake" with my dog and couldn't believe the sound of the frogs - there must be a pretty healthy
population of them there, because they were really loud. I liked the sound, though. Don't know if the nearby residents appreciate it as much as
I did that night, though.

I don't like fast-moving motorcycles appearing "out of nowhere" behind or beside me on busy city freeways - it scares the crap out of me.

I am on the other side of the barking dog complaint with my new puppy - she is 8 months old and has a deep, big bark. Currently, I'm trying to
train her to be a bit more selective with her barking so as not to make any enemies. She is never outside late at night or early in the morning, though,
unless she's walking with us.

[davep]

The polyphonic chorus of crickets and birds is about the worst that we get (and it's wonderful), apart from the odd dog barking from afar. Ours barks too, but only when she thinks that something is amiss, such as somebody approaching our land. Or a crow who dares land in the field. Or a deer.

In fact, our dog's the worst noise menace round here.

[katkinkate]

My bedroom is within 20m of a main highway through Brisbane. And occasionally my new fire alarm goes off, scaring me out of my wits, for no reason. I really have to move. I hate moving!

[stonecypher]

Interesting proposed noise ordinance in a Vermont village:

http://www.wptz.com/news/19454270/detail.html

Yippee! No more leaf blowers at inappropriate times!

[Tanada]

My 16 year old car needs a new exhaust system so this topic has been on my mind a lot lately. The thing is when I was a kid I spent a lot of time in nature, out in the woods as far as practical from any road. The problem was round about 1980 there came about a social revolution. Suddenly the peaceful quiet game trails I used to hike began to be used by teen age persons on 3 wheeler off road cycles. Even if you stayed off the trails in the deeper brush the roar was frequently there disturbing the deer, birds and other wildlife I used to enjoy. In the last few years where I live now it got a bit quieter because when gas hovered between $3.50 and $4.00 a lot of 'recreational' fuel use got cut back or outright eliminated. Now that prices have dropped things are going right back to the noisy stinky world we were creating in 1980-2004.

[Withnail]

hedge trimmers.

sick of them. ruins a summer afternoon.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Withnail', 'h')edge trimmers.

sick of them. ruins a summer afternoon.