Photo credit: History7778
By David Sykes, Vice Chair, The Quiet Coalition
On March 8th, Huffington Post writer Carrie Sturrock published an insightful piece entitled, “The Insidious Health Risk You Need to Know About: Noise Pollution.” At the beginning of her article Sturrock writes that “[m]ost people don’t know when permanent hearing damage is occurring,” and she then identifies a list of everyday noise encounters the average American may experience. Sturrock looks at the health consequences of this exposure, noting that noise damages more than just hearing. Most importantly, Sturrock states that there is a “consensus in America that anything above 85 A-weighted decibels (dBA) will put a person at risk for hearing loss,” but unlike other journalists she debunks the consensus by pointing out that the 85 dBA noise limit “is an industrial standard” and that the “sound threshold for damage is much lower.”
The focus of her piece is that noise exposure is a public health issue that deserves appropriate attention from the federal government. Of course, we were pleased that Sturrock interviewed three Quiet Coalition founders: Daniel Fink, MD, Jamie L. Banks, PhD, MSc, and David Sykes, along with a member of Quiet Communities’ Medical Advisory Board, Erica Walker, PhD.
Sturrock’s piece is a solid, carefully referenced summary of the current state of affairs on this complicated public health policy issue, and we recommend that you read and share it.
