Former SC Freiburg Stadium Photo credit: Markus Unger licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
We have written a number of times over the years about the dangers of stadium noise for players, employees including coaches and other team staff and those who work in the stadium and for those attending the games, but we’ve never considered stadium noise heard outside the stadium until now.
From Germany comes this report about the Freiburg soccer team and its new stadium.
Germany has very strict laws governing noise from sports events, the “Sportanlagenlarmschutzverordnung.” Apparently there are different regulations governing rare or occasional events and regular or recurring events.
The administrative court in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg ruled that previous decisions regarding the soccer games as rare events were in error, and the games are recurring events. Because of this, the games cannot be played at the scheduled hours due to violations of the noise ordinances (Larmschwelle).
This is quite surprising to me, given that the new stadium is located next to the runway of the local airport, but that’s what the court ruled.
We can only wish that similar noise laws existed in our country.
