Quiet! -- No Noise Is Good Noise As The Cacophony In Our World Keeps Growing

Bam! Bang! Bark!

Beep! Blare! Blast! Boom!

Buzz! Cackle! Clang!

Clap! Clink! Crackle!

Crash! Creak! Drone!

Drum! Grate! Grind!

Hiss! Honk! Howl! Hum!

Knock! Ping! Pop! Pow!

Rat-Tat-Tat! Rattle!

Ring! Roar! Rumble!

Scream! Screech! Shout!

Shriek! Smack! Snap!

Splat! Squawk! Squeal!

Thud! Thump! Toot!

Twang! V-rrr-oooom . . . !

Listen up! Noise is the enemy. Every day we are experiencing a sonic attack on our minds and bodies. Noise is an effluvium - odorless, tasteless, invisible - of our racket-ridden world.

No noise is good noise. There is no safe level of noise. A prolonged exposure to a moderate sound can be more dangerous than a short burst of extremely loud sound. Noise affects not just our ears, but our hearts, our arteries and our stomachs. It makes us irritable and alters our dreams. Noise invades our privacy, for a single person with a portable tape deck has the awesome power to ruin the peace and quiet of hundreds of others. Small wonder that the words noise and nausea have the same Latin root.

Noise is a lot worse than it used to be. The sounds of the past were less intense, less frequent and reached fewer ears. The chief culprit is the mechanization of our environment. The fact that the average older American has difficulty hearing is not the result of mere age; it is the result of having lived so long in a noisy world. People in less-developed areas of the world - where there is no heavy traffic, no lawn mowers, no sirens - do not experience the same decline in hearing that most of us view as part of growing old.

While great strides have been made toward muffling noise in the blue-collar workplace, it's getting noisier on the way to work and at home. The modern office is a cacophony of printers, copying machines, telephones and electric pencil sharpeners. The decibel level of some farm machines has been rising faster than the wheat. Studies show that high-speed drills may be destroying the hearing of dentists. And these days it's hard to hear the surf at the beach.

Some experts believe that loudspeaker noise in the command center of the USS Vincennes, the Navy ship that shot down an Iranian airliner, may have prevented the captain from receiving a clear assessment of the situation. Noise may have decided the 1987 World Series, which the underdog Minnesota Twins won by taking all four games at their home field, the Metrodome, where the decibel level was double that of St. Louis' Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals won all three games.

Man's hearing has been so damaged by technological noise that he has lost the sensitivity to sound that other creatures possess. But now, man-made noise is spilling into the oceans and endangering sea life. The noise of underwater drilling and ice-breaking operations is damaging the hearing of marine animals, drowning out acoustical signals vital to their survival, and masking mating calls and sounds associated with feeding.

Noise can be difficult to define. One man's symphony is another's cacophony. Just as some object to the dancer, others object to the fan, a barking dog may be reassuring to its owner, annoying to its neighbor. Noise is any unwanted sound. Or to paraphrase Justice Frankfurter on pornography, noise is hard to define but you know it when you hear it.

Of all forms of pollution, noise is receiving the least attention. Yet, according to the Rutgers University Noise Technical Assistance Center, it affects more people than any other pollutant. The American Speech and Hearing Association estimates that 40 million Americans work, live or play amid noise that is hazardous to their health.

Some of them have had an earful, and are making themselves heard on the noise issue.

On the way to work: The car radio is on to block out the sound of traffic. A siren snaps its whip of sound, raining hammer blows on your skeleton, making your spinal cord quiver. Someone's angry, leans out the window and, in a voice like a bronze gong, unleashes a tonguefull of invective. Cabs whiz-banging down the street. A vrooming motorcycle. A jackhammer so loud it takes the skin off your face. The noise shrinks and swells, as though alive . . .

In the old testament, the prophet Amos complained to King Jeroboam about noise: ``Your musicians played so loudly in entertaining the rich that they could not hear when the poor cried out for help.'' The walls of Jericho tumbled down from the intense sound made by the horns of Joshua's army. About 26 centuries ago, the ancient Sybarites excluded blacksmiths, cabinetmakers and other noisy artisans from working in residential areas. Even Enlil, the Babylonian deity, got fed up. ``The noises of mankind have raised my anger,'' he thundered just before ordering the Great Flood. God knows what he would do today in Philadelphia.

Not that ancient Rome was any quieter. Caesar tried, unsuccessfully, to ban daytime charioteering because of the noise it made on the cobblestone streets. The Roman poet Horace denounced ``the barking of the mad bitch and the squealing of the filthy sow.'' Not long afterward, another Roman poet, Juvenal, wrote: ``How much sleep, I ask you, can one get in lodgings here? The wagons thundering past these narrow, twisting streets, the oaths of draymen caught in a traffic jam - these alone would suffice to jolt the doziest sea-cow of an emperor into permanent wakefulness.''

An ancient Chinese militarist, seeking the most agonizing possible death for the enemy, prescribed the playing of flutes, drums, chimes and bells without cessation until the victims died. Richard Steele lamented in a 1711 edition of the London Spectator that ``we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we close our eyes.'' Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist, called noise his greatest torment: ``It is the devil's own infernal din all day long, confounding God's works and his creatures - a truly awful, hell-like combination.''

But we hadn't heard anything yet. The Industrial Revolution, first in Europe, then in America, would make ears yearn for the good old days. In England, George Bernard Shaw was seated at a restaurant and asked by the waiter what he would like the orchestra to play. ``Dominoes,'' Shaw snapped. In Germany, Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher, became a lifetime enemy of noise, which he called ``the most impertinent of all forms of interruption.'' One of history's loudest noises was the 1883 explosion of the Krakatoa volcano between Java and Sumatra; it was heard clearly in Bangkok, 1,413 miles away, and faintly on Rodrigues Island, nearly 3,000 miles away. But it didn't compare to the experience of Edward Lear, the English painter, who, while living in Rome, was distracted by an operatic neighbor, whom he called in a letter home ``a vile, beastly, rottenheaded, foolbegotten, pernicious, priggish, screaming, tearing, roaring, perplexing, splitmecrackle, crackmecringle, inane ass of a woman, practicing howling downstairs with a brute of a singing master so horribly that my head is nearly off.''

In America, Chief Sealth of the Suquamish tribe wrote a moving lament in 1854: ``There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of insects' wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by a midday rain or scented with a pinion pine.''

Oscar Wilde visited America in 1882 and called it ``The noisiest country that ever existed.'' In 1905, Robert Koch, a Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist, predicted that ``the day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague.'' Ambrose Bierce defined noise in this 1911 Devil's Dictionary: ``A stench to the ear. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.'' By 1930, New York City had a Noise Commission, and it reported that ``there are many places where a tiger from Siberia or Bengal could roar or snarl without attracting the auditory attention of the passersby.''

During World War II. U.S. Navy pilots would toss empty beer bottles from their planes at night over the Solomon Islands. The bottles made high-pitched whistles as they fell, interrupting the sleep of the enemy and tiring him for the next day's battle. In post-war America, Groucho Marx penned this complaint from his fifth-floor room of the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City: ``The din that a small corrupt city can raise between the hours of 1 p.m. and 10 a.m. is indescribable. Every bus, streetcar, vendor, hawker, factory whistle, blows and clangs at full blast. It was as close to a madhouse as I ever hope to get. The concerted din can make a five-grain Seconal hang its head in shame. Having tried everything else, I finally crawled under the bed and rooted for the atomic bomb.''

In 1968, U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart said, ``Calling noise a nuisance is like calling smog an inconvenience. Noise must be considered a hazard to the health of people everywhere.'' That same year, two people were killed when Robert Kennedy's funeral train was passing through Elizabeth, N.J., because the noise from low-flying Secret Service helicopters blocked out two warning blasts from another train that hit them.

At the office: The photocopier hums like a beehive inside the skull. Telephones ring like icy knives. Dial another office, and they put you on hold, piping music into your ear while you wait. Brass notes pierce the air like flaming arrows. The clop of high heels in the corridor. The elevator arrives with a ring that would pain Quasimodo. Pencil sharpener rasps like a dentist's drill. A cascading toilet. Sounds everywhere. They grab you by the throat. If the din got any louder, it would become visible.

Noise-induced hearing loss has been recognized as an occupational hazard since the 18th century, but today, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 7.4 million and 10.2 million Americans work in places where the noise levels present an increased risk of hearing loss. American industry is spending a small fortune trying to eliminate the problem; for example, industry experts estimate that noise-reduction costs account for between 5 and 15 percent of the cost of American textile products. The most dangerous occupations in terms of earning a deaf ear include firefighter, construction worker, farmer, industrial arts teacher and cab driver.

But perhaps the most dangerous livelihood of all is rock musician; the sequel to Live Aid and Farm Aid is often hearing aid. A number of rockers whose bands specialized in sonic impact have been forced into early retirement by hearing problems, and Kathy Peck, a former singer who suffered a severe hearing loss, has helped form a group called HEAR - Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers - in San Francisco.

The group Manowar, which the Guinness Book of World Records calls the loudest band in the world, wears earplugs. Fine and dandy, but what about the audience? It turns out that all those parental warnings about the dangers of loud music were right on the money. The sound levels of the average rock concert exceed the OSHA workplace levels, and George Haspiel, an audiologist at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco, says the ears of youths exposed to rock music look like the ears of soldiers exposed to artillery fire. Thomas Fay, New York audiologist, likens the use of stereo headphones to sicking the nozzle of a fire hose into the ear.

Professional athletes are affected by crowd noise, which was a key factor in the 1987 World Series when the Minnesota Twins defeated the St. Louis Cardinals. William Clark, an acoustics expert at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, says the intense noise at the Twins' Metrodome stadium interfered with normal conversations between players, masked important sounds like the crack of the bat, and upset the players' nervous systems. The Twins, who won all four games at the Metrodome, adapted to the noise better because they played there regularly. Clark says visiting teams made more errors in the Metrodome than in any other American League ballpark, and Clark warns that anyone who goes to the Metrodome regularly - players, concessionaires and fans - faces permanent hearing loss.

Probably the noisiest place to live these days is near a busy airport. Jet noise has always been a problem, but the increase in the number of flights since the industry was deregulated has made it worse. A study last year by University of Illinois economist Marvin Frankel concluded that airport noise can depress the value of a nearby homeowner's property by 20 percent or more - with the amount of the loss related directly to the intensity of the noise. The Federal Aviation Administration is considering phasing out the older jets, which are the noisiest, and there are attempts to reduce noise by installing ``hush kits,'' which can cost between $1 and $3 million, and by replacing engines, which can cost $9 million each.

Even the jet set is upset by jet noise. A new $80 million terminal was opened in Palm Beach, Fla., last year, and now jet noise is interrupting bridge tournaments, charity balls and business deals. One of the homes in the flight path is Mar-a-Lago, the 118-room weekend retreat of developer Donald Trump, who called a news conference last year to suggest that the whole airport be moved 10 miles south.

At home: A growling, herbivorous lawn mower, the kind of sound you can get personally angry with. Radio, tape deck, television - sonic monsters vying for attention, the threads of one song intertwining with another. Music to enrage the savage beast. The cutting, vertical whine of a vacuum cleaner. Dishwasher hisses like a thousand tea kettles. Hair dryer. Garbage disposal.

Sound waves break upon the eardrum as waves upon the beach. They are collected by the outer ear and passed through the eardrum to the middle ear, which contains the tiniest bones of the body. Here the sound is amplified and passed on to the fluid-filled inner ear, which is lined with thousands of tiny hair cells; these signal the auditory nerve to send electrical impulses to the brain, which interprets these impulses as sound. It is these hair cells that are damaged, permanently, by exposure to loud or prolonged noise. They are no match for excessive sound, which is a form of energy - waves of pressure that travel through the air, absorbing and releasing heat. Indeed, scientists are now working on a sound-powered heat pump.

Sound is measured in decibels, but it's a complicated system. The base reference point is zero, but that does not represent the absence of sound. Zero decibels is the threshold of audible sound for a healthy set of human ears. Moreover, each increase of 10 decibels represents a 10-fold increase in loudness; in other words, 100 dB is not twice as loud as 50 dB - it's 50 times as loud.

Rustling leaves come in at about 20 dB; a whisper, 30 dB; rainfall, 50 dB; a home vacuum cleaner from 10 feet, 69 dB; a jet airliner 500 feet overhead, 115 dB; a rock concert, 130 dB; a firearm or siren gets into painful levels at about 140 dB, and a sound of 180 dB, focused into a beam, can bore a hole through three feet of concrete. At 45 dB, sleep is disturbed; at 60 dB, conversation is disrupted, and at 85 dB, noise can induce stress. Depending on the duration of the sound, potential hearing loss begins at 70 dB, and a sustained exposure to noise greater than 85 dB - honking horns, shouting, jackhammers, takeoffs, rock music, subways - can cause permanent hearing loss.

Noise pollution was a major topic of discussion at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1987, and Roger Hamernik, a professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing at the State University of New York-Plattsburgh, warned that large numbers of Americans were threatened by a ``terrible handicap.''

``The loss of hearing is an insidious process,'' Hamernik said. ``It is also a double whammy, which most people don't realize. If you went deaf today, you'd also lose your ability to talk, because you have to be able to hear your own voice to control your own words and vocalize properly.''

Noise threatens considerably more than our ears and speech, however. Arline Bronzaft, chairman of the Noise Committee of the New York City Council on the Environment, cites evidence that ``young children brought up in a noisy home developed language skills more slowly and were less likely to explore their surroundings; that preschool children attending day-care centers near elevated trains scored below normal in psychomotor tasks, and that children living near airports and noisy highways had lower reading skills, and found it more difficult to solve complicated problems.''

The EOA's Office of Noise Abatement says there appears to be a link between noise and the development and aggravation of a number of heart problems, and that the body reacts to noise just as it does to other forms of stress - ``blood pressure rises, heart rate and breathing speed up, muscles tense, hormones are released into the bloodstream, and perspiration appears.''

Evening out: Cocktail party throbs like a jetliner, a chemical tumult of alcohol. A roaring fire of voices raised against music so loud it can burn calories. Tilt your ear and someone pours words into it. A lava of meaningless vowels, consonants, fricatives, plosives. Beepers hold professionals on an electronic leash. The room reverberates like a great drum whose skin is the ceiling, and the hair cells of everyone in it are being damaged.

A generation ago, Arturo Toscanini insisted on having concert programs printed on silk so there would be no noise when the audience turned the pages, and today many concert halls have taken to handing out cough drops to eliminate the hacking that interrupts performances. Concertgoers in Los Angeles were asked by the management what should be done about people who interrupt concerts with coughing, whispering and rustling candy wrappers; the suggestions ranged from throwing them off the balcony to cutting off their ears.

In Mozart's day, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms were given by someone shouting from the top of a cathedral. Early in this century, fire trucks used a brass bell to clear traffic. But today's emergency vehicles must use sirens in the 120-to-130dB range.

Noise is damaging our bodies and minds and robbing us of meaningful human interaction and thought. It's time to speak up, soft and clear, on the noise issue. If we can have smoke-free areas, we can have noise-free areas, too. Perhaps, then, we will be able to enjoy sound - the swish and gurgle of rain; snowflakes descending, ballerina-like, on white silence; birds giving the morning rave notices.

WILLIAM ECENBARGER LIVES IN PENNSYLVANIA AND WRITES FOR THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER MAGAZINE.