CLAMOR

Noise annoys—and worse.

As a pollutant, noise is unique because it’s ephemeral. Greenhouse gases linger in the atmosphere and microplastics fill the ocean, but once you stop making noise, it’s gone. That’s not necessarily good news, writes journalist Berdik, author of Mind Over Mind: The Surprising Power of Expectations, who has done his homework and delivers a painless education. After describing the background (how we hear) and the nature of the problem (the noises we make are more harmful than we realize), he explains what we can do (more than we’re doing). Better than vision, hearing connects us with others, and the harm caused by noise begins before anything surfaces on an audiogram. Children who can’t hear well suffer delayed development, and adults with hearing loss increase their risk of dementia. Much of Berdik’s book describes efforts to tame noises that we take for granted. Decibels measure sound intensity, but equating noise with loudness underestimates the risk of quieter domains such as offices and hospitals. Open-plan offices are spreading because they save money, but studies show that workers exposed to increasing background chatter are less productive and more stressed. No one likes the ubiquitous hospital beeps and alarms, and noisy operating rooms are absolutely life threatening. Operating rooms are getting their act together, and ingenious inventors are producing instruments that produce more informative sounds than the universal beeps, although many readers will note that these haven’t caught on. Less noisy “healthy buildings” and “healthy cities” have become an architectural mantra, and noise trumps food, service, and price as the leading restaurant complaint. Berdik describes clever, if often expensive, solutions to all. Delivering the obligatory bad news about the environment, he writes that massive noise, mostly from shipping, is disorienting whales and other undersea life, but fixes are possible.

Expert attention to a pollutant that’s not getting the attention it deserves.