Photo credit: Tourism Victoria licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This article in Good Food indicates that noisy restaurants are a problem in Australia, too. The writer, who uses hearing aids, reports that it’s hard to find a quiet restaurant there, and there are almost no quiet tables in any restaurants. That’s been my experience in Los Angeles.
An libertarian economist acquaintance views the world through his lens. He says that if people really wanted quiet restaurants, the market would respond and there would be quiet restaurants. I tell him that for some things the laws of economics don’t work. People wanted smoke-free restaurants, transportation, and workplaces, but it took laws and regulations to achieve that goal.
And the same is true for quiet restaurants.
The noise issue is very similar to the secondhand smoke issue. Environmental tobacco smoke (that’s the technical term for secondhand smoke) and noise are nuisances to many if not most people, but both are also health hazards.
Secondhand smoke causes heart attacks, lung disease, and cancer. It may be responsible for 30% of heart attacks. Unwanted noise causes hearing loss, increased blood pressure and pulse, and increased stress hormone levels. The CDC reported that many adults with noise-induced hearing loss had no occupational noise exposure whatsoever.
If enough of us complain to our elected officials–city council members, state legislators, and congressional representatives–maybe they will take action to make restaurants quieter.
