MEXICO: As noise levels build up around us, there is a fear we are tuning out from hearing certain sounds. New Research from America suggests that even wilderness areas are increasingly noisy, and our idea of what constitutes silence may be changing.
The clock in the corner is ticking. It’s distracting you, and it’s frustrating.
The concern is that there is the potential for a shifting standard for what constitutes quiet.
Eventually you tune it out and can happily go back to what you were meant to be concentrating on.
Imagine you want to hear a certain sound, though, but your time spent immersed in a world of overbearing sound and stimulation has rendered you unable to distinguish it.
That is the fear of Dr Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist with the United States National Parks Service, who has been researching the effects of noise pollution on people and the environment.
‘Noise is one of those things that once it starts intruding, it might be quite tolerable and not worth bothering about,’ said Dr Fristrup.
‘The concern is that there is the potential for a shifting standard for what constitutes quiet.’
The US National Parks Service has recorded sound levels at more than 600 sites across America’s network of national parks over the past 10 years.
Every site was noise-affected in some way by nearby human and machine activity.
